Emily was actually shocked that she was allowed to board the jet. Dave had told her the news moments before Emily had passed Leah off to Penelope so they could pull up the e-mails. Unfortunately that meant Emily’s brain was currently at a loss as to what to do with her sixteen-year-old charge. And they were now in flight. She jumped when a hand settle on her arm. She accepted the folder Hotch slid in front of her with a smile.
“What else can you tell us about the Chicago case?” he asked softly.
Emily’s shoulders went up and down with her deep breath. “I’m not sure if there’s anything I missed.”
“When did you get the case?” Derek asked, trying to jump start her from the beginning. It was disconcerting that Emily seemed so off kilter.
“Um… after the third family. They were from Maine, for one, and Chicago PD thought we’d have better resources. By that time he’d killed fourteen people, eight of which were children.”
Hotch exchanged a look with Dave over the pained look on the dark-haired woman’s face. Maybe allowing her along wasn’t such a good idea after all. “Did you?”
“So to speak. We had more manpower than they did, more experience with serial killers, but we were at the end of our ropes too. By the time Leah’s family came around… And I wasn’t trained in profiling at the time.”
“Now you are,” Dave said in encouragement. “What do you see?”
The team was silent as they searched through the files. The debrief had been taken up by Emily’s account of finding Leah and then getting the girl there. They hadn’t used much of the time on actually going over the case and trying to figure out what they wanted to do or start the preliminary profile.
“Why the suicide? Why make the kid look like they’re killing themselves?” Derek asked suddenly, moving with his words.
Emily tapped out an erratic rhythm against the seat between her and Hotch. “Why the Scotts?” It was totally different not only to look at the case eight years later but to look at it after spending years with some of the smartest people in the country.
“What do you mean?” Dave asked.
“Well, every other family had older kids. Kids that were twelve, thirteen as the oldest. Leah was eight and the oldest of two. So why them? There can’t be too many people that would believe and eight-year-old would kill their family,” Emily tried to explain.
Hotch looked at the files and then around at his team. “We need as much as we can from the original Chicago files.”
“I shipped them all to Bob when we transferred Leah. He’s got a copy of them,” Emily reassured. “I can put a call into the Chicago office to see if any of my teammates are still there.”
Meanwhile, JJ had spread all of the family pictures over the table. “Well, it’s not in looks,” she said as her eyes darted over all of the pages. “Nothing about these families is alike. The ‘suicide’ victims are both boys and girls, there’s nothing alike between the men and women when it comes down to looks.”
“We didn’t have a suspect list,” Emily remembered. “We’d barely made the serial killer connection and that was only by MO. We couldn’t find anything alike in the victims.” Then, a smile touched her lips. “Then again, we didn’t have Pen.”
“According to autopsies, each family was killed in the same order,” Reid said, pages in both of his hands. “Father first “ probably because he was the biggest threat “ then the mother “ probably because she was there “ then the children, almost youngest to oldest, though it’s hard to tell about the children. Time of death was too close together. The oldest, obviously, is made to look like a suicide.”
“Families were all different too. He targeted any number of kids, no uniform age for the oldest or youngest,” JJ added, still looking through the family statistic. She barely looked up when the computer beeped.
Emily, on the other hand, started. Both Garcia and Leah’s faces popped up on the screen. Emily smiled unconsciously at the girl. “Hey there.”
“Hey Aunt Em.” Leah sounded confused and Emily couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t had the opportunity to get in touch with Leah before boarding the plane.
“Alright, Justice League, here’s what Mini-Prentiss and I found.”
Both Emily and Leah blushed.
“The e-mails aren’t family pictures, much to my own surprise. Each of them shows a frame of a young woman, probably in and around Miss Leah’s age. Well, except the last e-mail. Those are definitely dead families.”
Emily resisted the urge to wince, though the same couldn’t be said for Leah, who did. It was a lot for the poor young girl to take, that much Emily was sure of. She vaguely wondered what Leah had bribed Garcia with to be in the same room for the call. Emily would bet tears were involved. “I thought she’d only been getting them for a couple of days.”
“Oh she has,” Garcia supplied, sending Leah a look that screamed ‘I-told-you-so’. “What she neglected to mention was that there were multiple pictures in each of the e-mails. I’m in the process of backtracking the e-mails and bringing up the time stamps from the pictures, but I’d bet they were taken when the crime scenes were fresh.”
“Why did he keep them so long?” Derek asked, his head elsewhere.
Emily watched Leah’s face just above Garcia’s left shoulder. If Derek was going where Emily thought he was going, Leah was much too young. No sixteen-year-old should be discussing murder, no matter what she may have seen or experienced. “Anything else, Pen?”
Garcia glanced at Leah over her shoulder. “The Chicago files were all transferred, including evidence, but they won’t be arriving in Seattle’s office for at least two days. I’m in the process of tracking down everything from this guy in between Chicago and Seattle and ID-ing the people in the single-victim pictures.”
“Thanks Baby Girl,” Derek said.
“I’ll give you a call when I’ve got something,” she promised. Then her eyes met Emily’s. “You, Princess, I will call when I know the jet’s touched down.”
Emily smiled slightly, knowing exactly what Garcia wanted to talk to her about. “I’ll call you.”
“Whichever way you want, honey, but we’re going to talk.”
Leah waved cheerfully. “Bye Aunt Em!”
JJ couldn’t help but smile as she glanced around. “Anyone else have a flashback to the Wizard of Oz?”
Emily slapped at her friend’s arm.
Hotch had watched Emily through the flight and even more so when they hit the precinct. Her reunion with Bob Spring was professional and he found himself inexplicably happy that there was no overly-warm greeting. Then she stepped out to make a call. He just wasn’t sure if it was to Leah or Garcia. Or both. He watched her though the window of the conference room and the glass doors of the bullpen between them. The pacing tipped him off. Leah. And it didn’t look like it was going well.
“We’ve got Dave and Liz in protective custody,” Bob said as he strode purposefully into the room. He took in the occupants and his brow wrinkled. “Where’s Em?”
“Agent Prentiss is outside,” Dave said, subtly correcting the man, much to Hotch’s relief.
He shook himself internally at the thought. What did it matter if Bob Spring called her ‘Em’? What difference did it make to him if Spring and Emily shared some sort of friendship? It was probably what had developed out of a mutual caring for what happened to Leah. His eyes drifted back to the raven-haired woman. She’d stopped pacing and was now leaning against the wall, cell phone in hand. She looked dejected.
He didn’t have to make an excuse to the team as to where he was going. Not only did they support each other when times got tough, but Hotch rarely had to speak or justify leaving. On the contrary, he often up and left and came back minutes later with a coffee or water so no one questioned his sudden departure. Sometimes, he was thankful for habit because it meant no one was really paying attention when he took to the bullpen doors instead, moving until he stopped right in front of Emily. Her eyes were closed, head back against the wall, cell phone clutched tightly in her fist.
“Everything okay?”
Brown met brown as she looked up, slightly startled. But it was something else that ghosted through her eyes when she noticed how close he was standing. “Leah wants to come to Seattle.”
“Of course she does,” Hotch replied.
“I even told her that Bob was putting her parents in protective custody so she’d know they were safe. She still wants to be here, to help.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Emily sighed. “Probably.”
“This can’t be easy for her, Emily,” Hotch said, his tone logical, rational.
“I know,” Emily agreed. “It’s not helping that she doesn’t have anyone. Her parents are in protective custody, I’m across the country…”
“Where is she staying?”
“With Pen,” she answered candidly. “It’s not the same.”
She was getting emotional and that worried him, especially since they hadn’t been in Seattle twelve hours yet. “Would you like to go back to Quantico?”
“No,” she said immediately. “She’s upset with me but…” She shrugged.
“Emily…”
“I can’t go back.” It was a rare glimpse of Emily’s emotion on a case. “This is-“
“Too close,” he said, reaching out and cupping her elbow. Touching had come slowly to both of them as their friendship developed but now, it was constant.
“I can do this without compromising the case,” she said strongly, her eyes full of fire. She had to do this case without compromising it. The only thing Leah would hate more than not catching the guy would be catching the guy and letting him go on a technicality.
“I’m not talking about compromising the case,” he said after a moment. “I’m talking about you.”
Her eyes widened at the implication. They were friends, sure, but she didn’t think they were close enough to actually express worry. And she wasn’t aware they were close enough for his fingers to start rubbing the skin above her elbow softly. “I’m fine, Hotch.”
He wanted to push, but managed to resist. “How’s Leah?”
“She says she’s fine.”
Hotch arched an eyebrow. “You don’t agree.”
“What do you think?” she snapped in exasperation. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Stress is normal.”
“Of course I don’t agree with her. She’s in a new city with no one and a serial killer trying to hunt her down.”
His hand squeezed her elbow. “Go home, be with Leah.” She often told him to spend time with Jack after tough cases and encouraged him to call his son when things got tough. He felt, in a way, it was his turn.
“No,” she repeated. “This is too important.”
He wanted to argue with her, really wanted to argue with her, but she was being stubborn. She wasn’t in a position where she was willing to listen to any arguments. He didn’t blame her. Gideon’s Sarah, and Garcia’s shooting were cases that had hit close to home and there hadn’t been anything anybody could say or do to get him to back off. “You have the option.”
Emily’s smile was tight. “Thanks, Hotch.”
He tugged on her elbow, the hand moving to her lower back as they started back towards the conference room. She still had one hand clenched around her phone which gave away the turmoil she was still feeling. Hotch took a deep breath, vowing to himself to catch this guy and soon. If only for Emily’s sake.