Title: The Storm Murders
Author: greenwich99
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: No way!
Word Count: 8,288
Rating: PG
Summary: Conventional serial killer mystery story.

***

The second of the storm murders took place, like the first one, in the late evening. There should have been people around, despite the autumn chill, as the theatres and cinemas let out, couples strolled home from restaurants and the bars emptied of all but those who had nowhere or no one to go back to. But tonight Alexandria was curled up indoors. For three days the storms had battered the city, swirling in from the cold Atlantic. Normal life was on hold. On houses up and down the long, beautiful streets, the window shutters were bolted shut and all the moveable objects taken inside. People were braced for the worst.

So when a body - white male, late 40s - was rolled out from the trunk of a car at the entrance to the parking lot at the south-eastern corner of Jones Point Park, no one was around to see it. No one heard the screech of the car pulling away. No one saw it take a right into South Royal Street and race away into the anonymity of downtown Alexandria. The dead body lay alone all night in the park, as the Potomac rushed by besides.

*


Derek Morgan arrived alone at the scene at about 8.40am. He had been driving to work when news of the body's discovery reached the BAU. The bullpen was empty except for JJ. Everyone else was at home facing the damage from the night before or weaving through the traffic, made easier today because so many people had taken the day off, but also much harder by the uprooted trees and fallen telegraph poles littering the streets.

"Just check it out," JJ had told Morgan. "It's almost in your way."

Morgan found two young police officers sealing up the body bag when he arrived. He introduced himself to them. "Single bullet wound to the temple," one of them said. "No ID on him that we can see. John Doe no. 2 this week."

The body of John Doe no. 1 had been lying in the mortuary since Saturday, the first night of the storm. White male, aged 30-40. Single bullet wound to the head. It had first been classified as a 'routine' murder. The services of the BAU had not been requested or offered. "One is a routine murder. Two is a serial killer on the loose. Three is panic and press conferences," Morgan thought.

He was peering inside the body bag when he heard a succession of quick clicks. He looked up. The clicks were from cameras. He was facing a press gang. Three photographers were pointing their lenses at him, and there was a TV crew tuning up a little further behind, getting ready for a live feed to the 9am local news. "This is only no. 2," Morgan thought in exasperation, "they're one corpse early."

*


"Hey! You're on TV." Garcia called out to Morgan as he passed by the open door of her office.

It was 10.15am. Morgan had made the short drive down to Quantico and had arrived at the BAU offices. He stepped in to Garcia's office. Garcia sat, as always, God-like at her post, staring at the computer screens which were her windows on the world. But today the windows all looked out on the same view. On every news channel in the state, Derek Morgan's startled face, looking up from the body bag into the cameras, was being shown. He turned on his heels and left.

He walked into the bullpen. It was fuller now. Almost everyone seemed to have made it in, storm permitting or not. Elle was standing over Reid's shoulder, looking at a file with him. JJ was ferrying papers around the office as usual. Reid smiled at Morgan. "Good morning, Derek. How are you?" But before Morgan could open his mouth, Elle piped in. "He will have to refer you to his superior officer, SSA Jason Gideon." And they all fell about laughing.

Morgan had not been used to giving press briefings. JJ used to take care of that. She was so good - and so female and pretty - at it. He had been almost trapped in that alleyway by the hounds from the press. "What can you tell us?" "Is it the work of the same killer who struck on Saturday?" "Are you any closer to catching him?" He should have said nothing. Instead, he had said the wrong thing.

"Please refer all questions to my superior officer, SSA Jason Gideon." He was startled to hear his own voice and everyone laughed again. A miniature TV was on at someone's desk. Having little else to impart, they were replaying his gaffe.

"Turn that off and get in here." It was Gideon's voice as he walked out of his office. They all trooped in to the conference room. Hotch was already there, setting up a presentation. They sat down at their usual places. Gideon nodded to Hotch when everyone was seated, and he began the briefing.

"John Doe no. 1 remains unidentified. The cops have put his fingerprints through every database they have, and Garcia's put them through a few more, but we've turned up nothing."

"So what do we know?" Morgan asked. Hotch carried on. "We were only called in this morning. But already we have a break. Body no. 1 was dumped in an alleyway off Cameron Street. Normally there'd be a lot of traffic round there, even at night. But because of the storm, fewer cars were on the road that night."

Gideon spoke: "So, we're not looking for a needle in a haystack. We have a time for when the body was dumped. The body was not in the alleyway when Ginelli's restaurant put their garbage out at midnight. They have told the cops that. At 5.20am, the garbage collection truck driver saw the body in the alleyway and dialled 911."

"So what was our break?" asked Elle. Gideon nodded to Hotch, who pressed some keys on his laptop and projected a map of the area around Cameron Street on to the big screen in the room. The alleyway where the body was found was highlighted in red. All around it, in various places on the map, small green spots were marked. Hotch continued: "The green spots are cameras. We've superimposed on this map the location of every known camera in the vicinity. Some are traffic cameras, some are parking lot cameras, some are security cameras from private firms in the area - "

At this point, Reid, who had been staring quietly at the screen, interrupted. "And if you look carefully at the map, you can see that the cameras are so located that for a car to drive to the alleyway, it had to have passed by at least one of them."

Gideon nodded to indicate that Reid was correct, and said: "Because of the storm, probably no more than a few scores of cars, maybe a few hundred tops, passed by those cameras last Saturday night. And one of those cars was carrying the body of John Doe no. 1."

"So all we have to do is watch 5 hours of footage from dozens of cameras and, er, then what? That's some break," said Elle, folding her arms.

Hotch pressed another key and the map on the screen changed. It was a map of the Jones Point Park area. Once again, there was a spot highlighted in red and many small green spots around it. "We have to watch more than 5 hours of footage, because although the body was dumped during those 5 hours, the car could have entered or left our camera coverage area outside those hours. But that's not our break," he said. "Our break was that every road out of the park area is also covered by cameras. The car will be on one of those cameras too."

"Oh, good," said Elle. "So we have to watch twice the amount of footage."

"I'm afraid so," said Gideon. "But we make the working assumption that both bodies were dumped from the same car. So in all that footage, one car will show up twice. That's our unsub. We can then track that car though the other traffic cameras in the city to see where it went. If we're lucky, at some point a camera will have picked up the licence plate number."

"Are we sure that both these guys were killed by the same unsub?" asked JJ. "Good question, JJ," replied Gideon. "We don't know yet. But it seems too much of a coincidence to have two bodies dumped in identical manner, in both cases with all ID information missing." He turned to the team. "OK, get on to it. Get all that camera footage before it gets wiped and get to work on it."

*


There were a lot of calls to be made. Every organization which had a camera pointed at one of the streets near the crime scenes had to be contacted, persuaded and, if necessary, threatened to hand over their tapes for analysis by the BAU. The task was made harder because many telegraph poles were down and some of the ones which were still standing served only to carry their signals into offices where no one had made it in to work today.

All through the morning, a cold breeze blew outside, making the trees sway from side to side, sometimes lashing out unexpectedly to hurl a trash can lid or other loose object against some window. The storm was set to strike again tonight.

"Is it a coincidence that both times the unsub has dumped the bodies, there's been a storm raging?" Elle asked Reid as they were taking a coffee break from the phones. "I mean, why take the risk of going out at that time if you don't have to? Or does he deliberately choose that time because it has some significance?"

Reid put down his coffee and spoke: "Sometimes a sudden disruption in nature and the physical environment can catalyse a mental disruption in some minds. The suspension of the normal rules and rituals of life - like we have in this storm when the whole city's life is turned upside down - can create a mental or a moral breakdown, so that in a disturbed person's mind, normal rules of behaviour - such as thou shalt not kill - are also suspended. So in the time of that disruption, he does things which would normally be inadmissible in normal times. Like killing. So the storm is not merely the occasion of the crime, it is also a catalyst of it."

"The time is out of joint," Gideon's voice said from behind them. "What?" asked Elle, turning round. "Hamlet," replied Gideon. "Never mind. We have confirmation from ballistics. The bullet used to kill John Doe no. 2 came from the same gun as the one for John Doe no. 1. We have a serial killer on our doorstep."

Elle said: "As if the storm hadn't brought out enough crazies." She pointed to the TV at one of the desks in the bullpen. Gideon had allowed it to stay on, so they could get the weather forecasts. The news channel had moved on from the hapless Derek Morgan. He was old news now. They were showing a demonstration outside City Hall. A small lonely band of people, huddled together and tottering in the wind, were holding up banners. Gideon struggled to read the banners because they were flapping so violently. 'Repent Ye!' said one of them. One of the demonstrators - the spokesman - had a microphone pointed at him by an unseen hand which was struggling to keep it still. "We believe these storms are a sign from God. They are a message to us to give up our sinful ways, to repent, and to return to the path of righteousness."

Gideon sighed. "That ever I was born to set it right." He walked away.

*


It was twilight when the last of the tapes from the surveillance cameras arrived at the BAU offices. JJ had excelled herself in making the arrangements. Some tapes had been delivered in person by the security staff, some had been picked up and brought round by the local police, the rest had been fetched by Morgan and Elle who had been out all afternoon, finding ways around roads blocked by fallen trees.

Gideon, Reid, JJ and Hotch were gathered in Garcia's little office. There were no spare chairs, so they stood around her desk, staring up at the wall of computer screens filling the room with bright multi-coloured light, like stained glass windows. Garcia sat and gave audience. "I think I can write some software to compare the images from these tapes and find fuzzy matches," she said confidently. "Fuzzy what?" asked JJ. "Fuzzy matching. It means you don't look for an exact match. You look for similarities only, like two cars with the same shape or colour. Then you use your eyes to decide if they're the same car. But first I have to upload all these tapes into the server."

"And these are some more humble offerings," said a voice from the door, and Morgan and Elle entered with a big box of videotapes. Morgan put the box down on the floor. "That's the last lot. Now, it's in your hands". He nodded towards Garcia.

"Jeez, look at my hair!" Elle cried, catching a reflection of herself in one of the computer screens. Her hair was windswept. "Is it very windy outside?" asked Garcia innocently. No one laughed. "Well, I have no windows in here," she explained. Morgan replied: "Yes, but you have all these computers and screens. You see everything. You know everything." "I know I want you people out of here," Garcia said, a little crestfallen that her joke had not been given due respect.

"Go home, people," Gideon said. "I want you here with fresh minds tomorrow."

They all drifted out. Elle added as she was leaving: "Garcia has her wonders to perform, and we're surplus."

*


Jason Gideon slept fitfully that night. The city resounded to the ceaseless noise of the storm as it came rushing in from the sea. The window shutters shook and rattled, and competing with them was the wailing of burglar alarms. Some people, more mindful of thieves than their own peace and quiet, had ignored the police advice to switch their alarms off to prevent the storm from tripping them.

But it was not the noises alone which kept him awake. He wondered if a car was even now making its way through the storm-struck city to some solitary place with a body inside. The weather would break soon. The city would go back to normality. Perhaps the unsub would too. He was afraid they would not catch their man in time. He revolved such thoughts in his mind until the storm eased in the early hours. Then he fell asleep, exhausted.

He was woken by the alarm, not - like yesterday - by a phone call. He walked in to the bullpen at 9am, having heard nothing on the car radio about another body being found. The city had survived the night. His mail was already on his desk. He fetched the first cup of coffee of the day and began to go through it. There was a small white envelope which, unlike the others, grabbed his attention because it was addressed to him in handwriting, not typescript as on all the other envelopes. Large, but neat, block capitals, with his name and the office address. He opened the envelope carefully. Instinct told him not to tear the envelope more than necessary. It might be evidence. There was a small white card inside, with writing in the same neat block capitals. He read it:

I AM ALPHA

*


"What does it mean? That's what we have to figure out." Gideon stood at the front of the conference room. The others - Hotch, Reid, Elle and Morgan - sat around the table. The white card lay at the centre of the table wrapped in a transparent evidence bag. There was little chance that the unsub would have left a fingerprint, but they had to observe the formalities.

Reid spoke first. "Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. So in saying that he is alpha, the unsub seems to be saying that he's first."

"A superiority complex is textbook among serial killers. They think they're too smart to get caught," Hotch added.

"Alpha male," said Elle, "assuming our unsub is male."

"Why are we assuming this came from the unsub?" Morgan asked.

"That is only a possibility," said Gideon. "It could be from a crank, or from someone trying to mislead us. But what if it is from the unsub?"

Hotch looked sceptical. "Morgan told everyone on TV your name and they replayed it a hundred times. He told people you're in charge of this investigation. Our address is in the book. We're easy to find. This card could be from absolutely anyone."

"Well, we have to pursue it." Gideon did not sound as if he had convinced himself of that yet. He added almost apologetically: "Until Garcia finishes her analysis of the tapes, we have no other leads."

"We do now!" JJ smiled as she walked into the room. She was clutching a small slip of paper. She held it out to Gideon. "We have a witness. Mrs Margaret Larsen. Lives across the street from where John Doe no. 1 was found on Saturday. Says she heard a car pull up outside and then drive away fast a few moments later. She went to her window to take a look and saw it."

Everyone around the table perked up. They knew the significance of this. If Margaret Larsen had good eyesight and a pen, she might have written down the licence plate number.

"Where is she? Is she outside?" Gideon asked, taking the paper from JJ and moving towards the door. JJ shook her head and pointed back at the paper. "That's where she lives. Her phone line is down because of the storm. She got a message to us via a neighbour after she saw a repeat of Derek on the news last night."

"Well, why the hell didn't the local cops find this Mrs Larsen before now?" asked Hotch in disbelief. "They didn't realise they had a serial killer on their hands until today," explained JJ. "Plus, they were busy dealing with storm-related 911 calls, so they didn't do house-to-house."

Gideon turned back into the room. He paused for a moment, as if weighing up what to do. Then he leaned over the table and held out the little piece of paper to Morgan. "You two," he nodded towards him and Elle, "get over there now. And call in immediately if she gives you the licence plate number."

*


Garcia said she would have all the answers by lunchtime. "It's a little more challenging than I anticipated," she told Gideon, Hotch and Reid when they went in to see her. "There is a big variation in picture quality among the cameras. Some are in black and white, some in colour. Some have not been calibrated properly and the pictures are out of focus…"

"But?" Gideon smiled. He knew her better than to allow her to lower his expectations so easily.

"But…I kicked ass last night and turned chaos into form! The programs are running now. Should be done soon. Where's Derek?"

"Out with Elle. He'll be back," replied Hotch.

"But we need him for this. He's got a great eye for detail."

"We all do," said Reid. "It's part of the job description."

*


Mrs Margaret Larsen lived in an apartment block in a brownstone building off Cameron Street. Elle and Morgan came off the Capital Beltway and headed due east. They were driving into the wind. Every now and then a newspaper or some leaves from a tree would fly into their windscreen. Once, Morgan, in the driving seat, had to slow down suddenly to let a flying object go past them. The traffic was light.

"Do you think he struck again last night and we just haven't found the body yet?" Elle asked.

"No. Both the two bodies so far were dumped where they'd be found at first light. This guy is not playing hide and seek."

Elle felt relieved but, in her heart, she knew it was a selfish feeling. She did not really care that John Doe no. 3 was alive for another day. She was grateful for the professional respite. Another murder would put them centre-stage again and raise the pressure. They still had time, however little, to find their unsub.

They sat in silence for much of the drive. Morgan drove as carefully as if he did not know the road. Elle, beside him in the passenger seat, looked around in awe at the work of the storm. The houses were mostly intact. They had been designed to withstand huffs and puffs. But the uprooted trees, fallen telegraph poles and traffic lights, the torn-down shop awnings, and the litter everywhere made her gasp at times.

After several minutes, Elle spoke again. "Look at those guys!" she said, catching sight of the doomsday protestors, walking along the sidewalk, making their way home now. They still carried their banners and placards.

Morgan did not look. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. The protestors, in a long single file, were on the sidewalk to his left. "Look out!" cried Elle, more loudly and urgently. Morgan looked this time. A placard had flown out of a woman's hands. It twisted in the air and then a sudden swipe by the wind hurled it across the road and towards their car. Morgan instinctively swerved to the right, trying to get out of the path of the placard. But it was too late. The placard crashed through the glass on the driver's side of the car, its long wooden handle entering first and striking Morgan clean on the head. He managed to slam on the brakes before he passed out.

*


"We used to be born at home and we died at home, surrounded by family. Not in hospitals, surrounded by strangers and medical equipment. Every birth and death was a community event, noted in church, in the sight of God. We used to worship God and try to save our souls. Now we go to hospital and try to save our bodies."

Gideon understood that, having just heard the news of the accident, his mind was wide open. Wild thoughts would fall in and there was nothing he could do to keep them out. He was driving to the Inova hospital, where they had taken Morgan. Elle had called him from the ambulance to break the news. Hotch and Reid were in the car with him, dealing with their own thoughts in silence.

Morgan was still unconscious. There had been significant blood loss but he was stable now. He would survive. So much the doctor told them when they introduced themselves to him and produced their badges. Morgan's blood family were in Chicago; the BAU were his family for now. They asked if they could see him. "I'm afraid not," the doctor told them. "As I said to your colleague - "

"Which colleague?" asked Gideon.

"This one." They looked around. Garcia was sitting in a chair behind them in the corridor. She had been crying. She smiled weakly at them and got up.

"How did you get here - " Reid started to ask. But Hotch touched him quickly on the arm - now was not the time for that question - and Gideon spoke over him. "I'm sorry, Garcia, we should have given you a ride. I didn't think. Morgan's going to be OK, though."

Garcia nodded in acknowledgment. "But they won't let me see him until he's had some more tests."

"Where's Elle?" asked Hotch. Garcia pointed down the corridor. "She's in the ER. I saw her, just before they took her off for a test. That was ten minutes ago. She's fine."

Gideon moved towards Garcia and put his hand on her elbow. "This must be very hard for you," he began, but she cut him off. "I know," she said, expressionlessly. "You need me to get back to the photo analysis. I'm on it." And she walked away down the long corridor, following the green line on the floor which led to the exit.

*


Mrs Margaret Larsen was expecting visitors in uniform and appeared to be a little disappointed when she saw Gideon and - especially - Reid in their crumpled jackets and pants, standing at her door.

They had called to see her on the way back from the hospital. They had seen Elle and she had described the accident to them. She was physically unhurt and had protested that she was not in shock, but Gideon had insisted on putting her in a cab, with Hotch to accompany her home.

Mrs Larsen was a small woman in her sixties, with white hair and sharp blue eyes. She answered, without being asked, that she was a widow and she lived alone. Reid noticed her glasses, folded and placed on the coffee table, as soon as they walked into her ground floor apartment. Had she remembered to put them on when she went to the window last Saturday night?

*


Garcia sat silently in her office. It was early evening. The lights in the room were switched off and the computers powered down. JJ had gone home and Hotch was still with Elle. Garcia was alone with the gloom.

She sat for a long, quiet time. Every now and then, the silence was punctuated by the faint sound of a goodnight being said somewhere along the corridor as another person left for the night.

She was jolted by the telephone on her desk. It rang loudly - its sound amplified by the silence all around - and the call indicator above its keypad began to flash, dividing the darkness in the room with a tiny, green light. She jumped involuntarily and picked up the receiver. It was Gideon.

"Garcia, I knew you'd still be there." "Sir, I have some bad - " she began but he was not listening. "Listen, we have the licence plate number. Mrs Larsen wrote it down on Saturday night and she's just given it to us. Take this down." Garcia picked up a pen and wrote down the number Gideon read to her. He continued: "It's a Chevrolet Uplander, 2003 make. Get the name and address where it's registered. I'm going to see about getting a team organised for a raid tonight."

Garcia tried to repeat herself. "Sir, we have a - " but he cut her off again. "Get on it, Garcia. And call me back." "Yes, Sir," she replied.

*


The strike team was padded up, armed and ready to go even before Hotch could make it back from Elle's apartment. Gideon and Reid greeted him at the entrance to the vehicle station. "Think we can wrap this up tonight?" he asked when he saw them. Reid replied: "The signs are good. Our witness was positive she read the number clearly. There was no other traffic on the street at that moment, so it had to be the car that dumped the body."

"So why are we standing here?" Hotch asked. "We are waiting for Garcia," said Gideon with irritation. He flipped his phone open and speed-dialled a number. After a moment, he spoke: "Garcia, I need that number now. What's the problem?" "Sorry, Sir." Garcia's voice was subdued and apologetic at the other end. "It's 255 Monroe Street, apartment 10. Vehicle is registered to one Ryan Libby." Gideon hung up without another word.

"Go easy on her," Hotch said to Gideon. "She's taking Morgan's accident hard." But Gideon had already walked away to give the address to agent Jim Roake, the strike team leader, who was sitting in the van a few metres away. Reid and Hotch followed him. They jumped into the back of the van and started putting on the bullet-proof vests which had been left for them. Roake barked out an order to the driver, and they were off.

*


Monroe Street had witnessed FBI raids before. Its tall, tightly packed tenements had once been on the fringe of the city's vice trade. The little apartments, built to be crowded by large immigrant families, had gradually fallen into the ownership of pimps and drug-dealers. Before Gideon's time at the FBI, the street had regularly been raided and searched, but they had never caught anyone who mattered. It was in the 1990s that Mayor Warner made it his campaign promise to clean up the neighbourhood and make it safe for families again.

The cure had killed the patient. The street was safe for families, but few chose to live there now. Many of the tenement blocks lay empty, some boarded up, the rest just abandoned and left in disrepair. Here and there, the yellowing remains of a poster of Mayor Warner, from his election glory days, was still glued stubbornly to a wall. The rats pretty much had the run of the place now.

Gideon felt a deep chill go through his bones as soon as he stepped out of the van, outside 255 Monroe Street. He instinctively turned his jacket collar up and put his hands in his pockets. He looked up. The building stood high over them like a giant. No lights were on inside. He wondered if the power line was down. Behind the building, the sky was dominated by black clouds, moving slowly but ominously by. There would be a storm tonight.

Hotch and Reid had barely set foot on the ground when the strike team, seven men and one woman, jumped out of the van and raced past them. The two agents in front held the battering ram. They struck it hard on the fraying wooden door and it gave way. The team rushed in, guns pointing ahead. Roake, in front, quickly sized up the layout of the building. "Up here!" he shouted and the team ran up the stairs with him. Within seconds, they had located apartment 10 and, without warning, the two agents with the battering ram broke down its door.

Gideon, Hotch and Reid came up the stairs a few moments later, just in time to see Roake emerge from inside the apartment. "All clear for you to go in," he said to Gideon, and handed him a torch.

They went in, and stood in stunned silence at the entrance to the small apartment. It was empty. Gideon waved the torch up and down the living room. There were bare floorboards. A single light socket was dangling from the ceiling, the bulb removed. A few empty cardboard boxes and torn magazines lay on the floor. But that was it. One of Roake's team came out of a door at the other end of the room, a torch in his hand. "Bedroom's empty too."

"This building has been empty for years." Roake said as Gideon, Hotch and Reid came back out onto the landing. He was trying, so they thought, not to laugh at them.

*


"The important thing" Gideon began, "is not to lose sight of what we have. We had one setback last night." He saw that his listeners had shifted a little in their chairs on hearing that last remark. He continued: "OK, we looked like idiots, raiding an empty building, but that is all. The investigation was not prejudiced. It goes on. We have an APB out on the car. And we have this." He nodded towards the centre of the table.

They - Gideon, Hotch and Reid - were sitting around the table in the conference room. Garcia was AWOL but had been summoned to join them. In the centre of the table lay a small white card. Written, as before, in neat block capitals, it said:

I AM OMEGA

The card had arrived in the morning mail for Gideon. He said: "The lab have confirmed that the card we got yesterday had no prints or DNA. So it's fair to assume that this one won't either. Obviously we'll check anyway. It looks like our unsub is careful."

"Well, at least he's no longer obscure," said Reid. The others looked at him. "You know what this means, right? I am alpha. I am omega?" Gideon smiled and said to him: "Tell them, Spencer."

Reid told them. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord. It's from the Book of Revelations in the Bible."

"A serial killer with a God complex. Can't these guys be original for a change?" Hotch said, with a little irritation.

"We should be grateful when they conform to the textbook patterns." Said Gideon. "Makes our job a little easier. Not that it's ever easy. So what do we know?"

Reid was first to speak. "He thinks he has God-like power, or maybe a God-like right to kill. In his eyes, the storm is a manifestation of his power and a judgment on the city."

Hotch interrupted: "But who's he punishing, and why? If he's punishing the city in general, why kill these two John Does? By the way, are they still John Does?"

"Only the first." said Gideon, reading from one of the papers he had in front of him. "The second was ID'd from his fingerprints last night. Gordon Bryce, aged 49. No fixed address but he operated mainly from D.C. Has a long record, mainly petty theft, no violence."

Hotch continued. "So it seems likely that John Doe no. 1 will also be a vagrant, hence why no one has reported him missing."

"Is our unsub killing off people who have broken his rules?" asked Reid. "Or people who have broken society's rules?"

"We're getting too deep into speculation." Gideon said. They turned towards him to listen. "We need to explain the facts. The car that the witness Mrs Larsen saw was relatively new. But the Monroe Street building has been empty for years, as we now know. So did the unsub register the car at an empty address when he bought it? Why? Has he been planning this? If so, was he waiting for a storm to come along so he could start killing? Has he already killed his third victim, last night while we were raiding the wrong address?"

There was silence for a moment. No one had the answers. Before anyone could speak, the door opened. It was Garcia. She walked in slowly, looking tired, her eyes averted from everyone. "Come in, Garcia," said Gideon, waving her towards a chair. "Where are we with the camera tapes analysis?"

Garcia did not sit down. She stood close to the door and spoke, not making eye contact. "I still have some bugs to iron out. The software I wrote is producing too many false matches. I need more time. I've been working on it a lot - "

Gideon interrupted her. "We need that data analysed. It's possible that the registration number our witness gave us was wrong. She's an old lady, she wears glasses, and it was midnight when she saw the vehicle - and it was moving away from her. If we can find that car on the tapes, it would give us confidence in her testimony. Or, if we can find some other car on tapes from both of the two locations, we also score. What's your ETA on this, Garcia?"

"I'm sorry, Sir, I'm doing my best," said Garcia quietly. "Is there any news from the hospital? When are we getting Derek back?"

"We don't know," Gideon replied. "Back to work, Garcia. Let us know if you need Reid to do some math for you on the analysis."

Garcia turned to go, but she could not leave for a moment because JJ came in and stood at the door. "Sir," she said, calling out to Gideon, "a message for you just came through. They've found our unsub."

*


The Chevrolet Uplander lay upside down, blocking the turn-off from South Columbus Street into Wolfe Street. The roof had been almost flattened, all the windows shattered, and the engine crushed into half its size. The lid on the trunk was hanging open and a white sheet covered something on the ground beside it. The car had taken a heavy hit at speed, somersaulted, and landed on its roof. An uprooted tree lay on the sidewalk on the right-hand side.

"We think he tried to avoid the falling tree, swerved sharply to the left and hit a truck coming the other way," the police officer at the scene told Gideon when he arrived there with Hotch and Reid. They quickly learnt the remaining details from him.

The accident had happened late at night. Someone in the neighbourhood had heard the crash and dialled 911. The paramedic crew had pulled the driver out and taken him to hospital, though he was DOA. Because of the storm, the fire department could not come out to clear up the wreckage until this morning. They had begun to lift the vehicle, to try to turn it the right way up, but the sudden movement caused the lid of the trunk to fall open. "And that's when this fell out." The police officer walked over to the car and lifted up the white sheet a little to reveal the head of a young white male, a single bullet wound blackening, but still fresh, on his temple.

Gideon, Reid and Hotch walked around the vehicle with the police officer. The front was too compressed for anything useful to be seen. A dark blue rug still adhered to the surface of the trunk and bloodstains were clearly visible on it. The front licence plate had been obliterated, but the one at the back was still intact. Gideon noted that it had the same registration number that he had given to Garcia yesterday evening. Mrs Larsen's eyesight had been vindicated.

Hotch spoke what all three men were thinking. "He killed victim no. 3 last night. He was driving to dump the body somewhere, swerved to avoid the tree, collided with a truck, and got himself killed."

"He has met his Maker," said Reid, with a parting glance at the crushed driver's seat of the Chevrolet, as they walked back to their car.

*


The storm season was declared unofficially over when the first intrepid family arrived at the Potomac View on Saturday morning and began to picnic. The ferry service to D.C. had resumed the previous day and drivers on the George Washington Memorial Parkway once again ran the gauntlet of stray golf balls flying out from the Belle Haven Country Club. Downtown, the glaziers were at work repairing the broad, broken windows of the department stores and Bloom's 24-hour bakery and bagel counter ("We Never Close") had re-opened. Children were resigning themselves to return to school on Monday, and so were their teachers.

Amidst these big and small reassertions of life, there was a great deal of clearing up to be done. Every neighbourhood had its quota of fallen trees to shift and white picket fences to mend. The sun was out and the mild temperature and blue skies beckoned people to come out and roll their sleeves up. And so it was that Garcia found herself bagging up litter from her front garden on that Saturday morning.

There was a lot to pick up. Her small cream-coloured cottage had fared well in the storms, being shielded on the east side by taller buildings. But there had been no defence from the debris swirling around the street for the past week. Her fence was down, of course, but she could not repair that by herself. It would have to wait until someone from the Yellow Pages could come out.

She spent a while patiently picking up and bagging the debris on her lawn. Every now and then she paused to catch her breath and take a few sips from a can of diet coke on the porch. Morgan was out of danger but still in hospital. He would have been here to help if he could. She knew that.

She was hauling the filled debris bags round to the side of the house, to wait for the collection trucks the following week. Once, short of breath and struggling with a bag she had overfilled, she was stopped in her tracks by a familiar voice from behind her saying: "Can I help?"

Jason Gideon was standing behind her. She turned to look at him and he smiled. He was wearing jeans and a casual shirt. It was his day off too. For a moment Garcia stood in silence. She had not expected this. Before she could speak, Gideon broke the tension by moving towards her and taking the bag from her hands. He carried it to the side and placed it with the other bags already stacked there. Then he walked back to Garcia and said: "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

Garcia gestured with her hand towards the house. "What're you doing here, Sir?" "Call me Jason," he replied. "I'm not your boss here."

Gideon did not go into the house. The soft autumn sunshine was falling on the porch. He sat down on one of the wicker chairs there and looked out on to the lawn. "I'll get you a beer," Garcia said. She went inside the house and came back quickly with a cold can. Gideon took it from her with a smile and she sat down on a chair beside him. "So what're you doing here, Jason?" she asked.

Gideon did not look at her. He continued to stare ahead, as if looking for the right words. After a short pause he spoke. "I've not worked as closely with you, Penelope, as with some of the others, as closely as I should have. That is my fault. I am as much your boss as theirs. It's partly because we gave you that isolated office, because of all that equipment you've got. When someone works alone a lot, and no one sees them working, it's easy for them to feel that no one knows about their good work either. It must be frustrating for someone who is brilliant at their job to be always the loner in the back office, while the rest of the team goes out and gets the glory and the attention. Sometimes they must just want to grab someone and say 'Look at me. I'm good too.'"

He paused and took a sip from his can. Garcia did not speak. Gideon continued. "Do you know, I blame myself for not giving you a room with windows. A room which would have let you look outside as you worked."

Garcia turned and looked at him in puzzlement. But he did not acknowledge her glance. He continued to speak into the air, as if talking to himself.

"I know someone who had enormous, inexhaustible knowledge at her fingertips. She had computer systems from the world at her command and she spent her day telling them what to tell her. Knowledge is power, and she had control of knowledge. She could press a button and see whom she wanted to see, know what she wanted to know about them. She could zoom in and zoom out on them, and she could press another button and turn them off when she pleased.

"With that knowledge at her disposal, it was easy to fall into the delusion that she had God-like power. What couldn't she do, with the right Unix command on her keyboard? Whereas if she had had some windows on the real world, had been able to look out at real people and things, she might have kept her feet on the ground. She would have learnt that people walking outside did not go where she commanded, that the storm would not cease at her bidding, that she could not even stop a leaf from falling off a tree, if she wanted to. She would have learnt humility."

Garcia moved, as if to stand up and go, but then appeared to change her mind and sat down again. The sun had risen a little higher now and was shining directly on the porch. She lowered her eyes. Gideon spoke again.

"Our killer is - was - Gary Stieffel, aged 30, a car mechanic. Lived here in Alexandria all his life, knew all the spots. Lived in the same house all his life, which he inherited from his parents when they died. And that's where he registered the Chevrolet which he used to transport the bodies." He looked at Garcia, but there was no reaction. He continued:

"I checked the vehicle registration database last night. It has not been tampered with. It shows his correct home address, not the Monroe Street address you gave us. I asked myself why."

"Sir," Garcia began, almost inaudibly. But - whether he heard her or not - Gideon continued to speak. "And I asked myself what went wrong with the camera tapes analysis you were doing. When you started, you were confident that you would kick ass - that's what you said - and find us our unsub's car. But the next day, the analysis was mired in problems. What changed?"

He looked to Garcia for an answer but he saw that her lips were pursed and her eyes had welled up. Gideon touched her softly on the wrist. She did not pull away, and he let his hand rest on hers for a moment before he withdrew it. Then he spoke.

"What changed was Morgan's accident. He was in hospital and we knew he'd be out of the team, for a few days at least. You wanted Morgan to find the unsub. You wanted to give him the vital clue, the missing piece that would complete the jigsaw. If you, as the office-bound member of the team, could not make the arrest and get the glory, you wanted it to go to the person you care most about. Could you do that? Of course you could. Did you not have all the knowledge, and therefore all the power?

"So while Morgan was recovering, you had to slow down the pace of the investigation. You had to stall a bit. So you told us there were bugs in your software. You knew we didn't know enough to challenge that. We trusted you absolutely. You thought you could go slowly with the analysis until Morgan came out of hospital, and then you could feed him the information which would solve the case."

Garcia spoke at last. "Sir, I swear it was not planned. It just sort of got out of hand. I'm so sorry."

Gideon nodded. "I know it was not planned. You had not foreseen that we would get an eye-witness and she would be so good as to have got the full, correct licence plate number of the killer's car. When I called you from outside her house and told you to get me the address where the vehicle was registered, you had to improvise. You couldn't allow us to go to the right house and make the arrest. So you used your databases to find an empty building and sent us to that, with the name of a fictitious person. You did not allow an innocent person to be arrested by sending us to an inhabited house. That showed goodness in you."

Garcia rose and stood at the front of the porch, with her back to Gideon, looking down at her ruined garden. "What will happen to me?" she asked without emotion.

"Nothing needs to happen," replied Gideon. "In the final analysis, you probably did no harm. The autopsy on the third victim says he was already dead by the time you gave me the wrong address, so we couldn't have saved him, even with the right address. As it happens, God made the arrest for us that night. If you had worked diligently on the tape analysis, we might have got some useful information, but that was never certain."

He put his beer can down on the floor, got up and went to stand next to Garcia, looking at the blue sky above them. "It may be that we wasted some time by looking at those Alpha and Omega cards I got in the mail. We assumed - and you don't have to say anything - that they were from the unsub. But there are not enough idiosyncrasies in the writing to be able to do a reliable handwriting test. Perhaps they were just from someone who wanted recognition and attention but could not ask for it, someone who needed to feel like a key player, a powerful force in the team, not the back-office girl. But, as I say, you don't have to say anything."

They stood quietly on the porch for what seemed like a long while. Then Gideon kissed her softly on her cheek, walked down the porch steps to her garden and made his way, without looking back, to his waiting car.

* * *


The last scene was particularly inspired by the corresponding scene in The Hammer of God, a Father Brown detective story by G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown is a kind of forerunner of the BAU. He is a Catholic priest, in England in the early 20th century, who solves crimes by using his understanding of human behaviour.

***