Chapter Text
Will frowned as he made his way into the house, anxiety flaring at all the people bustling about the crime scene. He tried to ignore them all as his eyes darted all around the living room, taking everything in.
The husband’s body was being lifted from a puddle of congealed blood in the floor at the bottom of the stairs, a spray of crimson decorating the wall along the midway point of said stairs, and zipped into a body bag. The wife’s body was still laying in a pool of her own blood, lifeless eyes open wide and staring at a point he could guess her killer had been standing, not far from the home security system that was also covered in a spray of blood along with the wall it was placed on.
After he took one more moment to take in the scene before him, he closed his eyes and focused on the crystal clear mental snapshot he now had of the room and the bodies. He was viewing the scene as someone else now. Not himself…but the killer that had done this.
He watched as the scene slowly began to rewind in his mind, the blood seeping back into the bodies and the couple getting up and moving around, the blood spatter on the walls and security device disappearing, and he felt himself walking backwards through the front door and out into the front yard where no cop cars or coroner’s van lined the street.
All was calm and quiet as he watched the house from across the way, hidden by the dark shadows of the night… And then time started ticking forward as he watched the wife pass by the dining room window while heading to the living room.
He felt his blood pulsing hot in his veins as he stalked across the street with a purpose, making his way up onto the front porch and kicking the front door in and calmly making his way inside as the security alarm started blaring. But he wasn’t worried about that. He pulled the gun from the waistband of his pants and aimed it up towards the top of the stairs as he heard running, eyes narrowing as soon as he saw the husband appear at the top and start rushing down.
He fired off two shots at the man, hitting him perfectly and causing a spray of blood to paint the wall as the man fell backwards onto the stairs and started tumbling down to the floor at the bottom.
“I shoot Mr. Marlow twice, severing jugulars and carotids with near surgical precision. He will die watching me take what is his away from him. This is my design.”
He slowly turned to his left where the wife was panicking in front of the security system and fumbling to type in the code that would bring the police faster. It wouldn’t have been fast enough to save her, and they weren’t going to interrupt this moment–he would make sure of that.
He raised his gun again and fired a single shot at the woman, watching as a dark spray of red coated the security system and wall as she fell to the floor, eyes wide with terror as she stared up at him.
“I shoot Mrs. Marlow expertly through the neck. This is not a fatal wound–the bullet misses every artery. She’s paralyzed before it leaves her body…” he slowly stalked closer to the terrified woman as he stared down at her, “which doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain, it just means she can’t do anything about it… This is my design.”
He glanced over to the security system and easily turned off the alarm, immediately answering when a call sounded from said system.
“This is DDX Security. Who am I speaking with?”
Will frowned as there was a stutter in his reconstruction as he tried to see how the killer managed to keep the security company from calling the police.
He opened his eyes, the room in the present moment coming back into focus and the sounds of the investigators on scene returning to him as he called out to the closest person, “I need the incident report from the home security company.”
The lead detective on the case that had contacted him and asked him to consult on this, and who had been patiently waiting nearby while he slipped into the mindset of the killer and mentally reconstructed the scene, immediately made their way over with a folder and handed it off to him.
Will flipped through the file and quickly scanned over the report, brows furrowing for a moment as he noted what it said. “This was recorded as a false alarm.”
“Yeah. And we don’t know how that’s possible. DDX Security has to have verbal confirmation along with a password before they’ll consider a false alarm. Mr. or Mrs. Marlow would’ve had to have been the one to tell them it was nothing,” the detective informed him.
“There was a false alarm last week as well,” Will noted just to blink as a thought immediately occurred to him. “He tapped their phone,” he said simply as he closed the folder and handed it back to the detective.
“What, like with a bug? How could he have gotten in the first time if that was the case? The alarm would’ve gone off if he was in the house before and he wouldn’t have had time to place a tap. Not to mention we haven’t seen anything like that in here.”
“No, no, not in here. He tapped the phone line, from the outside. Have someone check, they’ll tell you I’m right.”
He stayed where he was as the detective pulled out his cell phone and made a call, and not too long after that the man was returning with a frown and confirming that the phone line had been tapped like he said.
With that confirmation, Will closed his eyes and slipped back into his reconstruction where he left off.
“He recorded Mrs. Marlow’s conversation with the security company.”
“This is DDX Security. Who am I speaking with?”
He pulled a recorder from his pocket as he stared down at the paralyzed woman watching him with a growing sense of helplessness in her eyes, and he smirked at her as he played and paused the recording in response to the caller.
“Theresa Marlow.”
“Can you please confirm your password for security purposes?”
“Tea kettle.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Marlow. We detected a front door alarm.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Just us being slow getting to the alarm to disarm it.”
He took a deep breath in attempt to keep calm as the security check was trying his patience. But it would be worth it for how much uninterrupted time it would give him with his victim after it was over.
“Is there anyone in the house with you at this time, Mrs. Marlow?”
“Just my husband.”
“Alright. Do you require any further assistance, ma’am?”
“No, we’re fine. Thank you so much for calling.”
His smirk turned into a feral grin as the call ended.
“And this is when it gets truly horrifying for Mrs. Marlow…” Will mumbled with a frown before opening his eyes once more, not wanting to see what was done to her next.
He caught the eye of the detective for a moment before darting his gaze away at the disturbed look he was being given. “You don’t need me to tell you what he did to her after that. I’m sure forensics can clue you in.”
“Right… So what are we looking at here then? Just some pervert with a penchant for killing?”
Will shook his head. “This wasn’t just some pervert. This was personal.”
“So a stalker?”
“Not personal for Mrs. Marlow. This wasn’t about her. This was about Mr. Marlow. He assaulted Mrs. Marlow while her husband was still bleeding out and conscious to watch him,” Will explained. “You’re looking for a man with a superiority complex that knew Mr. Marlow, knew him well, and felt he’d been wronged by him in some way–that Mr. Marlow had taken something from him that he perceived to be rightfully his.”
It was quiet for a moment as the detective finished jotting down the profile in his notepad before he gave him a curious look as if waiting for more.
“There’s not much else I can tell you at this point. You should have more than enough to find your killer.”
“Yeah. Hopefully we find him before he decides to do this again with someone else that pissed him off. Thank you for your help, Mr. Graham.”
Will nodded in acknowledgement just to turn and make his way out of the house and over to his car, the smug satisfaction of the killer still echoing inside him and causing bile to rise in the back of his throat as he tried to push him out of his mind. His hands shook as he started his car and began driving away from the crowded street and all the flashing lights, already knowing he wasn’t going to find much rest that night when getting into the head of a psychopath always left him dreaming of blood and death and left his ears ringing with the sound of screaming.
It was this sick feeling in the pit of his gut that always left him feeling relieved he hadn’t made the cut to join the FBI so he didn’t have to do this kind of thing too often. It had been bad enough while he was still a detective back in New Orleans and only had to deal with homicides every so often that required him to do mental reconstructions and slip into a killer’s mind.
Thankfully the Quantico PD only ever called for him to consult on rare occasions after he first moved to Wolf Trap and started teaching at the FBI academy in Quantico, having come to the academy in search of someone that could help them profile a killer for them because their usual profiler was indisposed elsewhere. He’d been the first person everyone had directed them to because of his stint as a detective in New Orleans and how many cases he’d helped close before they let him go three years ago for being unable to discharge his firearm in a necessary situation.
The few times he’d been consulted for a case he was reminded of how much he didn’t miss it and instead preferred teaching future FBI agents how to profile and track down criminals where he didn’t have to get into a killer’s head so thoroughly it left him shaken for days afterwards. Though, if he was being completely honest with himself, he did have to admit the one thing he did actually miss about it was helping to save lives by being able to use his unique ability to help catch monsters like the one that murdered the Marlows.
He was still a little shaky by the time he returned home to his little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, but he smiled when he turned off the engine and got out of the car to hear the quiet of the night being broken by excited barking coming from inside his house. He quickly made his way up to his porch and unlocked his door, kneeling down to greet the six dogs that came to surround him and beg for pets.
As he wrapped his arms around Max when the tri-colored Border Collie leaned in to nuzzle at his face, he finally felt some of the tension he’d been holding onto since the crime scene drain out of him, and he let out a content sigh as he closed his eyes and buried his face into Max’s soft fur and let himself bask in the feeling of unconditional love and affection he could feel radiating off of his little pack as they welcomed him home.
The following week passed by rather uneventfully, thankfully with fewer nightmares than he’d anticipated before peaceful dreams found their way to him once more. The Marlow case had been closed and he’d been approved to share the casefile with his class, so this was what he’d decided to make today’s lecture about. Thankfully it had been long enough that reviewing the case with them didn’t stir up any residual feelings or thoughts of the killer that would make his skin crawl for feeling and thinking of them as his own, and it was easy to get through the day.
“Everyone has thought about killing someone, one way or another. Be it at your own hand or the hand of God. Now think about killing Mrs. Marlow.” He clicked the switch on the remote in his hand to change the picture on the projector to the body of Mrs. Marlow laying in a pool of her own blood in the floor. “Why did she deserve this? Tell me your design. Tell me who you are,” he concluded.
“Dismissed,” he said idly as he began packing up his notes and lesson planner, the quiet of the room broken by the sounds of his students getting to their feet and packing away their notebooks.
“Mr. Graham.”
Will glanced over at that to see a broad-shouldered African American man, appearing to be in his late forties, in a sharp suit and tie, and he immediately recognized him from a run-in he’d had with him a while back. He frowned as he returned his gaze to his hands as he continued to pack up his things and put on his glasses, usually opting to wear them rather than his contacts when he taught since it made it easier for him to avoid making eye contact with any of his students when he took his glasses off and couldn’t clearly see them from where he stood at the front of the room.
The man apparently took his glance as an invitation and stepped forward with a kind smile. “Special Agent Jack Crawford. I head the Behavioral Science Unit,” he introduced himself as he offered a hand for him to shake.
Will reluctantly accepted his hand as he kept his gaze averted and informed him, “We’ve met.”
“Yes. We had a disagreement when we opened up the museum,” Jack recalled as he curiously watched the man keeping his focus on anything but him.
“I disagreed with what you named it.”
“The Evil Minds Research Museum?”
“It’s a little hammy, Jack,” Will pointed out as he unfortunately finished packing up his bag, and he set it on the podium as he leaned against it and stared at a spot over the other man’s shoulder.
Jack shrugged. “It fits.”
Will scoffed. “Agree to disagree. Anyway, I assume you’re here for a reason.”
“I see you’ve hitched your horse to a teaching post even though, from what I understand, it’s difficult for you to be social.”
“Well, I’m just talking at them. I’m not listening to them, so it’s not exactly social,” Will said simply, feeling his anxiety bubbling up inside him with the prolonged conversation as the agent seemed to be scrutinizing him.
“I see.” Jack carefully studied the man as Will shifted from foot to foot in obvious discomfort. “Where do you fall on the spectrum?”
Will managed to meet the agent’s eyes at that, curious as to why he seemed interested to know when most people were either polite enough not to ask about his obvious quirks they noticed or ignored him like he ignored them. When he noticed the rather searching look in the man’s eyes he couldn’t help but wonder if the agent was here because he seemed to be wondering if he should be considering him for a suspect for something, and he averted his gaze down to his chin as he assured him, “My horse is hitched to a post that is closer to autistics than narcissists and sociopaths.”
Jack nodded. “But you can empathize with narcissists and sociopaths.”
“I can empathize with anybody,” Will corrected as he decided to go ahead and loosen his tie and take it off to toss into his bag, the feel of it around his neck starting to feel suffocating. “It’s less to do with a personality disorder than an active imagination.”
“Well, can I borrow your imagination?”
Will curiously met his eyes again. “You want me to consult on a case.”
“I’ve heard you’re the go-to guy for the local PD when they have a tricky case. You’ve helped them close every single case they’ve asked for your help with, and you had a rather outstanding solve rate during your time as a detective. I could really use someone with that kind of record right now.”
Will considered it for a moment, having never consulted on a case so soon after finishing one since he changed professions. He hesitated as he remembered how bad it had been for his mental health as a detective dealing with one case right after the other and nearly continuously jumping from the mind of one killer to the next when too many homicides started popping up at once…but this was the first time the FBI was asking him for a consult, so this was probably an instance of them not having their usual profiler handy themselves like the local PD. Or they could all just be overworked and needing a fresh pair of eyes if it was a case they’d been stuck on for a while.
Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to at least hear him out. So he gave a small nod and grabbed his bag as Jack asked him to follow him and they made their way out of the room, presumably heading to the BSU’s headquarters a short walk away.
“So what’s the case?”
“Eight girls abducted from eight different Minnesota campuses, all in the last eight months.”
Will furrowed his brows at that. “I thought there were seven.” When he saw Jack giving him a curious look out of the corner of his eye he added, “Just because I don’t really socialize with people it doesn’t mean I don’t watch the news every now and then to see what the rest of the world is up to, Jack.”
“There were seven.”
“When did you tag the eighth?”
“About three minutes before I walked into your lecture hall.”
“You’re calling them abductions because you don’t have any bodies,” Will guessed.
“No bodies, no parts of bodies, nothing that comes out of bodies–nothing.”
“Then those girls weren’t taken from where you think they were taken.”
“Then where were they taken from?”
“I don’t know. Someplace else.”
They made it to Jack’s office shortly after that, Will’s eyes immediately darting over all the photos on the crime board of seven girls, campus locations, and following along the white strings connecting from victim photos to points on a map.
“All of them were abducted on a Friday so they wouldn’t have to be reported missing until Monday. Now, however he’s covering his tracks, he needs a weekend to do it.” Jack grabbed a picture from a folder on the table in front of the crime board and handed it to Will.
“Number eight,” Will guessed.
“Elise Nichols. Saint Cloud State on the Mississippi. Disappeared on Friday. Was supposed to housesit for her parents over the weekend to feed the cat, but she never made it home.”
Will hummed in thought. “Yeah, one through seven are dead, don’t you think? He’s not keeping them around.” He tapped the photo he was holding. “He got himself a new one.”
“So we focus on Elise Nichols.”
Will was quiet for a moment as he studied the picture in his hand before looking back up at all the girls smiling at him from the crime board. “…They’re all very, uhm, Mall of America,” he noted as he moved to add Elise’s photo to the board under number seven. “That’s a lot of wind-chafed skin.”
Jack nodded in agreement. “Same hair color, same eye color, roughly the same age, same height, same weight. So what is it about all of these girls?”
“It’s not about all of these girls, it’s just about one of them. He’s like Willy Wonka. Every girl he takes is a candy bar, and hidden in amongst all those candy bars is the one true intended victim. Which, if we follow through on our metaphor, is your golden ticket.”
“So is he warming up for his golden ticket, or just reliving whatever it is he did to her?”
“Mmm, the golden ticket wouldn’t be the first taken, and she wouldn’t be the last. He would hide how special she was. I mean, I would. Wouldn’t you?”
Jack fell silent as he considered that.
“So, if that’s all, I need to get going. I gotta get home and feed my dogs and let them out,” Will informed the agent as he shouldered his bag he’d set down on the table.
Jack held up a hand to indicate for him to hold on. “I want you to get closer to this.”
Will frowned at that. “No. You have Heimlich at Harvard and Bloom at Georgetown. They do the same thing I do.”
“That’s not exactly true, is it? You have a very specific way of thinking about things,” Jack pointed out.
Will scoffed. “Has there been a lot of discussion about the specific way I think?”
“You make jumps you can’t explain.”
“No, no, no. The evidence explains.”
“Then help me find some evidence.”
Will huffed in frustration as he caught the pleading look on the man’s face, and he hated that it immediately had him wanting to help. “That may require me to be sociable,” he protested weakly.
“You’ll do fine. I’ll be right there with you,” Jack assured him. “I could really use your help with this. This girl could still be alive, and if she is we might be able to find her and bring her home with your help.”
And with that, Will caved with a resigned sigh. “We should go see her parents, just to make sure she really didn’t ever make it to their house.”
“They said she didn’t.”
“But they don’t know that for sure. They could have missed something to indicate she had been there before she was abducted.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. I’ll get us plane tickets for the next flight to Minnesota then.”
Will let out another sigh as Jack pulled out his phone and stepped out into the hall to make a call, and he pulled out his own phone and dialed the only contact that he could call a friend.
It rang twice before a soft, cheery voice was greeting him with a warm, “Hey, Will. You don’t usually call. Everything ok?”
Will smiled. “Yeah, I’m fine, Alana. I just got asked to consult on a case.”
“Another one already? I thought their profiler was supposed to be back by now.”
“He is. I’m not being consulted by the local Quantico PD. The FBI’s having some trouble with a case and the head of the BSU seems to have heard about me and decided to ask for my help.”
“…Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, it’s not been that long since you last helped on a case. You’re always pretty shook up for a bit after you look at a scene.”
“I’ve been fine for the past couple of days. Besides, I’m not going anywhere to look at a body, I’m gonna help find a lead to give the FBI so they can find whoever’s been abducting girls in Minnesota. Apparently he took another girl. Jack Crawford’s hoping I can help point him in a direction so we can hopefully find this girl alive.”
“Well, I suppose it’s good to know you’ll just be trying to find a lead for those missing girls. So, knowing Jack Crawford like I do, I’m guessing he’s wanting to take you to Minnesota as soon as possible?”
“Yeah. He’s booking our plane tickets as we speak.”
“So you’re calling to ask me to check on your dogs for you,” Alana guessed.
“If you wouldn’t mind. I doubt I’ll have the time to make the hour-long trip back to my place to feed them and let them out.”
“You know I don’t mind in the least seeing as how I’m your closest neighbor.”
Will huffed a laugh in amusement. “Can you really be considered my neighbor if you live twenty minutes away?”
“I can when you live out in the middle of nowhere like you do,” Alana teased. “I just finished my last guest lecture of the day, so I can start heading that way now.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Nonsense. What are friends for? Besides, it’s not like I don’t get anything out of checking on your dogs for you.”
“Oh? And what exactly do you get out of it then?”
“Free dog therapy.”
Will laughed. “Well I’m glad to help then. I’ll talk to you later. Thanks again.”
“Anytime. Bye, Will.”
Will ended the call and glanced up as Jack popped his head back into the room with a quick, “Let’s go. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
It was dark by the time he and Jack made it to Duluth Minnesota and found their way to the Nichols residence. He’d taken off his glasses and stayed back and just looked at the family photos all along the shelf he was standing in front of that he could see clearly from the short distance, but he could feel Mr. and Mrs. Nichols’s eyes on him and it left him feeling uncomfortable even though they’d been fine with asking all of their questions to Jack so far since he’d taken the lead on introducing them and asking if they could give them some more information on their daughter.
“I’m not really sure what else we can tell you that we haven’t already,” Sally said sadly as she brought a couple of mugs of coffee over to the table for her and her husband, the agents having both declined her offer to make them a cup as well.
“We’re just trying to get an idea of where exactly your daughter could have been taken from,” Jack explained. “We have no evidence that she was taken from her dorm at the campus, and nobody saw her with anyone suspicious the day she went missing. If we can pinpoint where exactly she was taken, it may help us find some clue as to who could have taken her.”
“She could’ve gone off by herself,” Baxter said thoughtfully. “She’s always been a very free-spirited young woman… She doesn’t really like living in her dorm. I could see how the pressure of school might have gotten to her… She likes trains, so maybe she just got on a train and…”
“She looks like the other girls, doesn’t she?” Sally asked Agent Crawford when her husband trailed off, a distressed waver in her voice.
Jack nodded. “Yes, she fits the profile,” he confirmed.
“Could Elise still be alive?” Baxter asked hopefully.
Jack glanced over to Will where the man was still standing and staring at a shelf full of pictures, but he still wasn’t offering up any thoughts of his own on the matter, so he returned his gaze to the parents and admitted, “We simply have no way of knowing either way at this moment in time.”
“How’s the cat?” Will finally cut in.
The couple shared a confused look before glancing over to the other agent, Sally giving a dumbfounded, “What?” at the random question.
Will turned around and glanced in the direction of the couple as he reiterated, “How’s your cat? Elise was supposed to feed it. Was the cat weird when you came home? I mean, it must’ve been hungry. It didn’t eat all weekend.”
The couple shared another baffled look before Baxter looked to the agent and shrugged. “I didn’t really notice. I was a bit more focused on the fact my daughter wasn’t here when she was supposed to be, and by the fact she wasn’t answering her phone when we tried to call her after seeing she wasn’t here.”
Will nodded just to look to Jack.
When Jack noticed the pointed look and noted Will was even giving him direct eye contact, he asked the couple, “Would you give us a moment, please?” and followed him over to the archway leading into the living room.
Once they were far enough away from the couple and Will saw Jack giving him a curious look, he whispered quietly, “He took her from here. She got on a train, she came home, and she fed the cat.”
Jack frowned just to furrow his brows in confusion. “What makes you so sure about that?” he asked just as quietly.
“If the cat hadn’t eaten for three days it wouldn’t have just been hungry, it would’ve been ravenous. They would’ve both immediately noticed something was wrong with it,” Will pointed out. “He took her from here.”
The surety in Will’s tone had Jack pulling out his cell phone and making a call. “The Nichols’s house is a crime scene,” he declared when his call was answered, the couple at the kitchen table gasping and staring at him with wide eyes at his announcement. “I need an ERT immediately. I want Brian Zeller, Beverly Katz, and Jimmy Price… Yes, and a photographer.”
Baxter took a shaky breath as his wife reached over and tightly squeezed his hand, and he looked between the two agents as Crawford hung up his phone. “Why is it now a crime scene?”
“Can I see your daughter’s room?” Will asked in lieu of either him or Jack answering.
“Police were already up there this morning.”
“Yes, well, I wasn’t. I’d like to take a look for myself,” Will said simply.
Baxter frowned but nodded as he got to his feet. “I’ll take you up.”
“Do you have any gloves? Preferably disposable? I don’t want to risk contaminating any evidence.”
“I-I have a box of latex gloves I use for when I’m cleaning,” Sally offered tearfully as she got to her feet and made her way over to the supply closet.
As soon as Will pulled the gloves on he looked towards Mr. Nichols and followed him as the man began leading him through the living room and upstairs to the second floor.
When they turned down the hallway to see the closed door at the end on the right, Will curiously tilted his head as he saw the cat with its face down at the gap at the bottom of the door and softly meowing as it swiped its paws underneath it as if trying to get at something.
“Let me get the door for you,” Baxter said as he started reaching for the handle.
“Mr. Nichols, please put your hands in your pockets and avoid touching anything,” Will instructed before the man could grab the doorknob.
Baxter frowned in confusion. “We’ve been in and out of here all day.”
“And now that we know it’s a crime scene, you need to avoid contaminating it even more than you already have. Can you hold the cat so it doesn’t dart into the room when I open the door? I’d like to keep it out of there.”
Will waited for the man to lean down and gather the cat into his arms and step back a bit before he opened the door.
He froze for a moment in surprise as the door swung open to reveal the room behind it, along with the bed back against the far wall in the center of the room…and Elise Nichols laying straight on her back in the middle of the bed partially under the covers with a couple of dark splotches covering the front of the white nightgown she was wearing.
“Elise?!”
Will was snapped out of his surprise at the exclamation filled with joy and disbelief, and he quickly reached out and grabbed ahold of Mr. Nichols’s arm and pulled him back towards the hallway when the man tried to rush past him. “No, don’t! I need you to leave the room. Right now. And send up Agent Crawford.”
Baxter paused just to furrow his brows in confusion. “But…” he trailed off as his eyes flicked back over to the bed where his daughter was sleeping. He wanted to protest that he wanted to be here when the agent woke her up to question her on where she’d been and how she’d clearly managed to get away, but he froze as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room and he suddenly noticed how much paler Elise looked…and the dark patches along her nightgown that he knew for a fact was supposed to be solid white.
“No… No…” he muttered to himself in denial as he shook his head. “She’s not… My baby girl’s not…” He couldn’t even say it, so determined to deny what his eyes were telling him.
“Please leave the room now, Mr. Nichols, and send up Agent Crawford,” Will instructed once again.
The man let out a broken sob as he hugged the cat tighter to himself, and Will gently tugged him out into the hallway to help get him out of the room and away from the sight of Elise. He felt his heart aching and insides twisting in despair as he couldn’t help but empathize with the man with how strong his emotions were that were rolling off of him. He felt himself wanting to cry, wanting to scream, wanting to burn the world down to ashes if that was what it took to find the person that did this to his little girl and make them pay.
He had to shake his head to clear the thoughts that very obviously weren’t his so he could re-center himself and focus to do his job. It helped when Mr. Nichols finally disappeared down the hallway and around the corner, and Will had to take a few deep breaths and slowly let them out as he focused on the thoughts and feelings that weren’t his and tried to sort them from his own so he could forcefully push them away.
He glanced towards the other end of the hallway when he heard footsteps to see Jack making his way over to him with a frown.
“What did you find? I couldn’t get Mr. Nichols to say anything other than you needed me up here.”
Will glanced back into the bedroom at his back. “He put her back.”
Jack furrowed his brows in confusion before he followed the other man’s gaze into the room and his eyes zeroed in on the bed, or rather what was on it.
Twenty minutes later Will saw police lights flashing through Elise’s bedroom windows, and Jack was informing him the local forensics team was waiting downstairs while he was waiting for his own requested team to arrive by a private jet since it was faster than waiting for them to catch the next available plane.
“I’d like the room to myself for a bit. I can focus better when I’m not having to block out other people moving around me and making noise.”
Jack gave him an incredulous look at that. “You couldn’t have taken the time to do that while we waited for the local police to get here?”
“I needed a bit to collect myself,” Will admitted.
“Collect yourself?”
“I, uh, unintentionally empathized with Mr. Nichols after we saw the body. I had to get him out of my head before I could jump into the mind of your killer. I know from experience that it’s not a good idea for me to rapidly jump from one mindset to another without time to remember what’s me and what isn’t so things don’t get…jumbled and I don’t turn into an incoherent mess.”
“I see… Take your time then. When you’re ready to talk, you talk. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t talk. I’ll keep everyone downstairs. You let me know when you’re ready for us to come in.”
Will said nothing as Jack left, taking another moment to steel himself before he made his way back into Elise’s room and over to the windows to glance outside. He tried to ignore the vehicles and small curious crowd gathering around behind the perimeter the police had set up, instead scanning just beyond the windows to see if there was anywhere the killer could’ve climbed up to get to Elise’s unobstructed window so he could take her and then again to put her back.
He turned away and made his way over to the body, leaning in to get a good look at her and noting the six bloody patches on the front of her gown that were spaced evenly apart, three perfectly aligned spots on both her left and right. But that wasn’t what killed her, there wasn’t enough blood and the wounds were in places that would have missed her organs. The wounds were made after she was already dead.
He let his eyes move away from the obvious signs of injury to look over the rest of her, immediately zeroing in on the dark ring of bruises around her throat.
He moved back to the windows and pulled at the one right across from her bed, unsurprised to find it unlocked, and raised it until he could crawl through it and step out onto the slanted porch roof just beyond. As he looked over the side he could see a way that would have been fairly easy for a grown man to climb up, and he took a moment to turn and stare back through the open window and into Elise’s room to her still form on the bed as he attempted to start focusing on the mindset of the killer.
He stepped back through the window and into the room and stood halfway between it and the bed as he closed his eyes.
Behind his eyelids he watched as Elise’s body shifted from the still form laying on her back with her arms straight at her side to a more relaxed position with her body partially turned to the side and one of her arms resting up on her pillow next to her head in a peaceful slumber, the dark splashes of blood on her nightgown fading away to nothing as the material returned to its unblemished state, the dark bruising disappearing from around her neck, and a warm flush of color returning to her death-pale skin.
When time started ticking forward once more, he just stayed where he was to watch her for a moment as she slept. Just watching her breathe and shift in her sleep as he took her in, allowing himself a moment to admire her.
He indulged for just a few more seconds before he made his move.
He lunged at the bed, jumping on top of the sleeping girl and slamming his knee down into the middle of her chest to stun her so she wouldn’t immediately start trying to fight back from the rude awakening, his hands wrapping tightly around her small neck and squeezing as hard as he could as she reflexively reached up to grasp at his wrists in a feeble attempt to pull him off.
She stared up at him with wide eyes filled with pain, her mouth open in a silent scream as he choked the life out of her, her hands quickly falling limp from his wrists as she already began losing consciousness. He hated that he’d had to cause her pain–he’d felt her ribs break under his knee from the force he’d used to throw himself on top of her. He hated to make her suffer for even a–
“You’re Will Graham.”
Will jumped, his eyes snapping open as he was jolted from his reconstruction, heart pounding and mind racing as he was struggling to settle back into his own headspace when he’d been so thoroughly in the middle of someone else’s.
He tensed as he noticed an Asian woman appearing to be in her early thirties like him and staring at him with a bright smile from where she was leaning over Elise Nichols’s body from the side of the bed opposite from him. “You’re not supposed to be in here,” he told her curtly.
“You wrote the standard monograph on time of death by insect activity,” she said in admiration.
“What are you doing up here?” Will asked in slight irritation.
“My job? I’m a CSI for the FBI’s BSU. Beverly Katz. I specialize in fiber analysis.”
“No, that’s not…” Will trailed off with a frustrated huff. “You’re not supposed to be in here right now. Jack was supposed to keep everyone downstairs until I was done.”
“Oh? Well, I just got here. I heard Jack say the body was upstairs and I kind of started up while he was saying something about someone else already being up here, but I figured he was gonna say one of the local CSIs was up here taking a look or something. Gotta admit, I was a little confused when I walked in and you were just standing there in the dark with your eyes closed. I thought maybe you had a migraine or something and were just taking a minute–I’ve had to do that before when I get them–so I decided I’d just leave you to it while I got a look at the body. I wasn’t gonna bother you, but after I turned on the lamp in the corner and got a better look at your face I was surprised to realize I recognized you,” Beverly explained.
“I didn’t know you were FBI,” she continued when he merely shifted from foot to foot and stared at the wall next to her.
“I’m not. I’m a special investigator.”
Beverly arched her brows in surprise at that. “So you’ve never been an FBI agent?” she couldn’t help but ask, stunned that Jack would bring someone in on a case that wasn’t part of the bureau.
“No. I, uh, I applied years ago when I was still a detective, but the FBI has stricter screening procedures,” Will offered.
“Better at detecting instability.” Beverly gave him a curious look, unable to miss the way he kept fidgeting almost nervously and how he wouldn’t look at her directly. “You unstable?”
Will frowned.
Before he could decide on how to respond, or even if he wanted to, his attention was pulled to the bedroom door as he heard footsteps fast approaching a second before Jack was storming into the room and giving the woman a reprimanding look.
“You’re not supposed to be in here, Agent Katz.”
“Sorry, didn’t catch the memo before I was already up here,” Beverly admitted. “But, hey, I found antler velvet in two of the wounds on our vic.”
Jack paused before he could order the agent out of the room so Will could finish up. “Antler velvet?”
“Yeah. Like she was gored by a deer or something.”
All eyes turned to the bedroom doorway when someone let out a scoff and two men, one appearing to be in his early thirties and the other appearing to be in his late thirties, made their way into the room.
Will moved to step further back towards the open window to give himself a bit more space as he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable enclosed in the small room with three people he didn’t know and one he’d only known for a few short hours now.
“Deer and elk pin their prey, they don’t gore it,” the younger of the two newcomers said simply. “They put all of their weight into their antlers to try and suffocate a victim. That’s how they would kill, like, a fox or a coyote.”
“Antler velvet is rich in nutrients. It actually promotes healing,” Will informed them all. “He may have put it there on purpose.”
Jack gave him a baffled look at that. “You think he was trying to heal her?”
Will looked to the body as he tried to sort through the mindset of the killer he could still feel partially overlapping with his own thoughts. “He wanted to undo as much as he could, given that he’d already killed her.”
“How do you know she was already dead when he tried to undo as much as he could?”
“Because he killed her here, in her bed. He climbed up onto the roof of the porch, slipped through her window–unlocked, because why would anyone stop to consider they’d need to lock a second-story window–jumped on top of her with enough force to break her ribs, and strangled her until she suffocated. After she was dead he took her body with him.”
Jack furrowed his brows in confusion. “So he killed her here, more than likely took her to where he took the others, but then he put her back where he found her? Why would he do that?”
Will shook his head. “Whatever he did to the others, he couldn’t do it to her.”
“…Is this his golden ticket?”
Will frowned as he felt a sense of…guilt as he looked at the girl. “No… This is an apology,” he said with certainty.
When he felt all eyes in the room on him, it had him tensing, and he could feel the beginnings of a tension headache creeping up on him. “Does anyone have any aspirin?”
“Uh, yeah, I got some. I always carry some on me,” the older of the newcomers informed him just to reach inside his jacket pocket and pull out a small bottle.
Will nodded in thanks as the man handed it over, and he shook two pills out into his palm and swallowed them dry before handing the bottle back. “I’d like to go home now,” he informed Jack as he turned in his direction and stared at his tie so he would know he was talking to him.
“We’re not exactly finished here, Will,” Jack pointed out.
“I am. I don’t have anything else for you right now. And I was…interrupted before I could properly finish earlier, so I need to take some time to collect myself.”
Jack hesitated, because he felt like Will had to know something else he could tell them if he claimed the killer was apologizing for what he did to Elise Nichols, but he didn’t know enough about Will’s unique condition to know if it would be ok to push him when he was saying he needed some time to collect himself again.
“Alright. I’ll call the airport for you and get your ride home sorted out,” he decided.
Will felt some of the tension drain out of him at that, and he gave a soft, “Thanks,” before he quickly made his way out of the room and downstairs so he could head outside and get some fresh air.
He wasn’t out there long before a uniformed officer came over to him and informed him she was asked to drive him to the airport, and after that everything was a bit of blur as he let himself zone out a bit to try and sort out his head.
He managed to collect himself during the plane ride back to Virginia, and he could feel the fatigue starting to seep in as he got in his car and started making his way home. Though he found himself perking up a bit once he was on the familiar stretch of backroad that would eventually get him to his house. His eyes had suddenly caught sight of something on the side of the road ahead of him, and once his car quickly caught up to it he saw what appeared to be some kind of dog running in the direction he was heading.
He started to slow down as he got closer, trying to keep stride with it and not worrying about blocking the road or the dog getting hit as it was late enough now–and that particular road was already usually so light on traffic as it was even during the day–that he was the only car on it.
He rolled down his window as he saw the dog starting to slow down to a bit of a walk as it panted heavily, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest as he could see it covered in a layer of dirt and grime and its fur more than a little matted even though it had a collar with a broken leash attached to it that was dragging on the ground behind it.
“Hello,” he called out softly to get its attention.
It took off running a bit again at the sound of his voice, but it didn’t go far before it was back to walking and looking like it was in need of a breather. So he was able to pull his car up closer and parked it so he could get out and try to encourage it to come over to him.
It was a bit of a challenge as it seemed to be pretty scared, and it was fast enough to keep outrunning him every time he tried to get close enough to it to grab it even though it was clearly exhausted. So, since he wasn’t too far away from his house, he decided to get back in the car and sped his way back to his house so he could get some treats, apologizing to his little pack that tried to greet him at the door as usual for pets since he didn’t have time to properly say hello to them when he wanted to get back to the stray as fast as he could so he would hopefully still find it there.
It hadn’t gone far by the time he made it back to where he last saw it, finding it now laying down over in the grass next to the road and under a tree. He pulled his car to a stop again and got out, bringing the bag of treats with him and opening the trunk so he could sit inside at the edge and pop open the treat bag as he softly cooed at the dog that was now watching him warily from where it was laying.
“It’s ok. I’ve got some treats for you if you wanna come over and say hi. I bet you’re hungry.”
He reached into the bag and pulled out a couple of the strips of chicken jerky, tossing one close to where the dog was laying but far enough in front of it that it would have to move itself to take the treat. It didn’t take long before it moved to grab it, and he tossed another one a little closer to himself that the dog hesitantly made its way over to.
He kept this up until the dog was close enough it was in reach, continuing to softly coo to it with a warm tone when it darted away from his hand a couple of times when he reached out, but eventually it seemed to realize he was safe and moved to eat one of the treats from his hand and let him pet it. He fed it a few more treats as he gave it some much-needed affection, and eventually he managed to coax it up into the trunk and gave it a few more treats to eat as he closed the back and made his way back up to the driver’s seat.
When he made it home he got the washtub he used for bathing his dogs and filled it up on his back porch and set up the extension cord and hair dryer in a safe spot not too far away where it wouldn’t get splashed, set out the dog brush to get the mats out of the stray’s fur, and brought the big kennel out for him to put it in for a bit so he could safely introduce it to his other dogs after he was done cleaning it up. With that all set up, he let his dogs out long enough to let them use the bathroom before he called them back inside and made sure to secure the back door so they couldn’t get back out, and he made his way to his car and got the stray out of the back and led it to the back porch and into the washtub by its broken leash.
While he was bathing it he saw he had another boy on his hands, and he thought of a name for him since his dirty collar he removed from him didn’t have one on it.
It took him a bit to get him clean and brush the tangles from his fur, continuously cooing at him and telling him, “Such a good boy, Winston,” to praise him for how calm he was being and to start to get him to realize he had a new name.
He was beautiful once Will got his fur dried, his coat a gorgeous golden brown with darker speckles and patches of brown here and there with a face that had him suspecting he was some kind of mix between a Golden Retriever and a German Shepherd, and he smiled at how soft he felt and how happy Winston seemed to be to let him run his fingers through his now smooth fur.
He took some time to give him a lot of loving attention before he coaxed him into the kennel and closed him in. He then went inside and got a bowl of dog food and water and brought it out to let him eat some more and drink his fill, and after he appeared to be finished he took the bowls back inside and finally let his other dogs all come out to sit on the back porch with him as he introduced them to their new brother.
“Winston, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Winston.”
When the other six dogs all started barking at the sight of the new dog in the kennel, Will gave a soft, “Ah,” and made a small tsking sound they knew to be a light reprimand, and the pack quickly quieted down even though they seemed to be watching Winston a bit warily as Will sat down in the chair he had next to the kennel.
He smiled when Buster, his little Jack Russell Terrier, was the first one to come closer and sniff at Winston, just to laugh as Buster then passed the kennel and moved to jump up into his lap for some cuddles.
Will definitely hadn’t been expecting the long and exhausting day he’d had when he woke up that morning, but he was happy it at least ended on a happy note with a new addition to his little family.