Chapter Text
“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” — T.S. Eliot
Spencer Reid had been in the bullpen before the first wink of dawn, catching up on paperwork because he couldn’t sleep. Occasionally, he stayed in the office all night; overnight security had long stopped trying to roust him and send him home. Everyone thought him odd for finding paperwork meditative, but he took solace in leafing through a case file: that satisfying crisp shuffle as a page turned over; the tang and scratch of ink. If he could, he would handwrite his reports. He was a terribly slow typist and used only his index fingers. But the Bureau would never allow it, so he poked away at the desktop keyboard, squinting in the screen’s sharp blue light.
By the time the secretaries and office personnel started to arrive, Spencer already had quite a start on the day’s work. The coffee was watered-down compared to the way he brewed it at home, but still, he favored the bullpen over lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling in the dark. There was always more paperwork, and in the twenty-four months and four days that had passed since Maeve’s death, Spencer had taken quick advantage of that. Even so, it was hard not to let a mind such as his meander, especially considering the time of year.
It was just after New Year’s. There had even been a real tree in the lobby for the holiday season. A haggard group of cadets had hauled it in back at the beginning of December at the behest of Derek Morgan, who oversaw some Academy training. But December and January were always tough on the team. In Spencer’s case, he couldn’t always get the time off to fly out and see his mother, and he’d spent many a Christmas and New Year’s out in the field. But—per Diana’s letters and Dr. Norman’s correspondences—her condition was beginning to improve. One small victory to come out of this past year, but it was offset somewhat by Dr. Norman’s retiring from Bennington Sanitarium at the end of the month; it was unclear who would take on his caseload. Spencer had pondered transferring Diana to a facility closer to where he lived, but how much good would that do? He was almost never at home, and his mother hated to travel.
He didn’t like to think about what he’d planned to do after finally meeting Maeve. What he ought to be doing, instead of spending another holiday season with a stack of case files. He imagined, in some remote alternate universe, another version of him was happily married by now. And from there, it was easy for his mind to wander off: clearing out the spare room at home to use as a nursery—
No. Spencer pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. There was only so far that he allowed his mind to meander, even after David had advised him to let it do so. He allowed the grief to wash through him: sixty seconds of debilitating pinched nerve hurt, and then it was back to his typing. But the computer screen’s brightness seemed to lance into his vision; everything started coming in edgier. He stood and made his way over to the break room for another coffee. Three sugars with half and half, his labeled mug. He had just returned to his desk and was chewing on a Lactase tablet when he heard the rhythmic click of high heels behind him.
“Morning, my dove. Looks like you didn’t meet up with a comb.” He turned and saw Penelope, who was holding a rather thick file. Handing it over to him: “I wish I could say this wasn’t for you, but alas, everyone’s up and at em; we convene in twenty. Oh—” She lowered her voice to a whisper as they started toward the conference room, Spencer slinging his satchel over his shoulder. “I renamed the BAU group chat ‘The Jedi Council’. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to see it, with your dinosaur-egg phone and all, but anywho, I wonder how long it’ll take Sir Boss Man to notice.”
Spencer laughed, tucking the file under his arm. The BAU group chat had been a recent point of contention between Penelope and Aaron, but all in good fun. “He wasn’t too pleased with ‘Justice League’.”
“Ugh, I know! He changed it back in, like, two seconds.”
“Twelve,” Spencer stepped aside to let another group pass. “It never takes Hotch longer than twelve seconds to respond to a push notification. Unless it’s a text message, but that’s only because he’s thinking of how to reply. In the instance you’re referring to, he maxed out on response time because he’d fallen asleep on the jet, and everyone’s phones going off at once woke him up.”
“Whatever.” Penelope gently thwacked him on the shoulder. “Next in the lineup is ‘The Avengers’ if he doesn’t take to ‘The Jedi Council’. But if you tip him off—”
“Oh, I can’t get involved in this.” Spencer let her go into the conference room ahead of him, taking his customary seat at the round table. “Remember what happened the last time I got roped into a practical joke war?”
“But of course. I was your accomplice.” She rumpled his hair. “Oh, I almost forgot! I had a feeling you stayed here all night or something of that sort, so I brought you a breakfast sandwich, minus the cheese, because I will not be an enabler for lactose intolerance.”
“Thanks, but I already put cream in my coffee.”
“Ugh, figures.” Penelope rolled her eyes. “Self-destructive to the last.”
“I’ve told you guys I can’t help it. I love dairy.”
“Uh-huh, and I love absinthe, but you don’t see me guzzling enough Green Fairy to fuel a Humvee.”
“If you say so.” Spencer slid the new case file onto the table and began to leaf through it.
“Oh, and spoiler alert,” Penelope’s face fell, “you might not want to eat after looking at that.”
Spencer was halfway into his fifth read-through by the time everyone had arrived and was seated. Garcia went about presenting the case, but on and on Spencer read, again and again. Indeed, he was quite perturbed by the whole thing. It was a Greater Boston case, for starters, and misfortunes always seemed to befall the team whenever they were called to cases in that area: Foyet, Doyle, Bale, and now this.
Three girls, early to mid-teens, snatched the evening of a new moon and dumped the morning of the next new moon. The abductions had started in late summer, with the unsub in a month-long cooling off period between moon cycles before taking another girl. An initial press conference had taken place the morning after the third victim disappeared, acknowledging they were likely dealing with a serial offender but not much more information was given. Certain towns and counties had started implementing curfews for the children, but as the months trickled on and the unsub struck elsewhere, those curfews had started to relax. In the wee hours of this morning, after they were alerted to the latest finding, Boston’s FBI Field Office had looked over the case and contacted the BAU.
Victim One: Mackenzie Wynne, a thirteen-year-old track runner, was taken on Monday, August 25, while on an evening jog. On the morning of Wednesday, September 24, a man leading a group of kayakers out on the Shawsheen River noticed something lashed to the scaffolding of a bridge as they passed under it. Thick rope, the type usually used by sailors, pulled taut by the currents. It was directly in their path, but when the group tried to maneuver around it, their paddles dredged up Mackenzie’s body. She wore a white nightgown buttoned all the way up, and her teeth were missing. In close-up photos, the mouth had been opened to reveal the naked gums, lackluster and bloated. Spencer tongued at his own teeth, fidgeting, his mouth suddenly thrumming. She hadn’t been in the water long: the ME’s report estimated two or three hours.
Victim Two: Mia Sung, a twelve-year-old dancer, was snatched on Thursday, October 23 while biking home from practice, which often ran late into the evening. Somewhere in the half mile between the studio and her house, the unsub lay in wait. State troopers, along with a volunteer search party, had combed every single route she could have taken and found nothing. Fast-forward to Saturday, November 22, and a couple out for an early morning hike along the Shawsheen River noticed thick rope twined around the trunk of a downed tree. Mia’s body was tucked into a central hollow, secured into place. She was also missing her teeth, and she wore a similar-looking white nightgown. There was that same river again, though further north, closer to where it fed into the Merrimack.
Then there was the matter of Victim Three: Gemma Larkin, a fifteen-year-old aspiring writer, disappeared on Friday, December 20. The next new moon was two days away, but the unsub had jumped the gun. She was last seen in her boarding school dorm room. School had just let out for the holidays, and Gemma had stayed on campus to await her red-eye flight home to London. Her teacher was set to drive her to the airport that same evening. (If the unsub knew Gemma was leaving the country, this meant they kept detailed tabs on the victims’ schedules; Spencer filed this away for later.) In the wee hours of Saturday, January 17, today, she’d been dropped at Boston Children’s Hospital in the Longwood area, wrapped in blankets, and laid out on a bench. The attending noted only the upper canines were missing, and the nightgown and blankets she was found in were being analyzed at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory. Gemma had turned sixteen in captivity.
But it was the thought of the teacher who had started the process on reporting Gemma missing, a woman named Darcy Maddox, that sent a curious little frisson running through him. If his calculations were correct—which he knew they were—Darcy would be thirty-three, her birthday having passed in December.
First period AP English with Mr. Cohle, Las Vegas High School. Very back of the classroom, at the desk adjacent to Spencer’s. Passing notes back and forth as the students in front of them dozed. Verbally gifted and freckled, with a little gap between her front teeth. The last time he saw her, she was waving out the window of a car headed for the airport.
I’ll write, she’d told him, as her family loaded suitcases into the trunk. I promise. As soon as I get to—
“Kid?”
“Hm?” Spencer startled. He was just thinking that Darcy Maddox had technically broken her promise to him: she’d stopped writing him back. “What’s up?”
“I was asking,” said David, “how many read-throughs it was gonna take for you to come up with any insights?”
“Oh, uhm.” He cleared his throat, wiping his clammy palms on his slacks. “I do have some.”
“And?” David urged him.
“It looks like there was a smorgasbord in the victims’ systems,” Spencer sat forward, “but the same smorgasbord each time: traces of plant-based products, mefloquine, industrial-grade laxative, and sedatives—”
“Mefloquine, the antimalarial?” Jennifer narrowed her eyes at him.
“Mefloquine is also known by its brand name, Lariam,” Spencer said. “It has a black box warning label for its peculiar and long-term side effects: fever, vision changes, nausea, vomiting, loose stools, hallucinations, and nightmares. In rare cases, seizures. Lariam is usually prescribed to travelers and military personnel bound for the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.”
“That’s not an everyday toxicology find,” Derek scanned the report, “even for us. What do you make of the rest, kid? I mean, plant-based products? I’ve yet to encounter a vegan unsub.”
“Hitler was vegetarian,” offered Spencer.
Jennifer gave him a look. “Really?”
“A bit of a departure from the traditional definition of ‘unsub’, but yes; in 1938, his care team put him on a meat-free diet for reasons that remain unclear, though colleagues have reported his detailing graphic scenes of animal slaughter to convert them to vegetarianism. During meals, no less—”
“Reid,” Aaron said, “we have all the time in the world to profile Hitler, but the next new moon is in three days. What did you make of the toxicology reports?”
“Hmm, too early to say,” said Spencer, “The drugs were all administered steadily and in concentrated doses throughout their captivity, at least that’s what the ME thinks. It may be nonsensical to us, but to the unsub it must fulfill some sort of ritual. What’s more, these victims look nothing alike and are all from different areas, confirming my suspicion that whatever ritual the unsub is performing only makes sense to him.”
“The consulting forensic psychiatrist thinks the unsub is female,” Alex chimed in.
“That tracks,” said Derek. “No signs of sexual assault, which is unusual in a preferential offender. That and the care the unsub took even after death: victims were bathed, no significant secretions or soiling found on the nightgowns.”
“Could be a sign of remorse,” Jennifer offered.
“Could be part of it,” Derek said, “but it reads more like ritual fulfillment to me.”
“Marks on the gums indicate they struggled,” Aaron said. “Massive blood rush to the area. They were alive when the unsub started extracting their teeth.”
“Oh, God.” Penelope sat down.
“This is strange.” Jennifer flipped through the pages. “ME’s team only found cause of death when they ran additional toxicology analyses.”
“Aluminum phosphide tablets,” said Spencer, peering at the report. “Known in some areas as ‘rice tablets,’ AIP is commonly used in agricultural settings, specifically stored cereal grains, as a pesticide. Once it’s ingested and comes in contact with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach, it releases poisonous phosphine gas. In severe cases a painful, multi-organ shutdown commences within minutes, which is what happened with the first two victims. The autopsy reports note a fishy odor upon opening each body, which is why additional chemical analyses were run. The viscera were congested with petechial hemorrhages, a telltale sign of AIP poisoning.”
“Mon dieu, Junior G-Man!” Penelope glared at Spencer. “Thanks for that reminder. I’ve been trying to forget about reading that all morning.”
Spencer jerked his head in Jennifer’s direction. “JJ brought it up.”
“This unsub will be meticulous to a fault in daily life,” said Aaron. “Closer to middle age.”
“She knew Gemma Larkin was leaving the country,” Spencer piped up again, “so she covets her victims. And she jumped the gun and took Gemma two days prior to the new moon.”
“Any sudden disruptions in her routine will send her off the rails,” Derek said. “Late thirties, at the youngest. Forensic shrink puts the age range between thirty-five and sixty-five, but even with the rarity of a maybe-female offender, it’s too wide a range to work with.”
“I think this shrink is onto something else,” said Alex. “It’s a bit obvious, but he theorizes that the unsub lost a child or became separated from one. She might have been negligent or harmful, which could have led to loss of custody or death.” She pursed her lips. “The white nightgowns suggest she’s fulfilling some sort of fantasy, but it’s curious that she’d dress up the victim she let go. Could Gemma have escaped?”
“No one at Boston Children’s saw anything out of the ordinary in the moments leading up to or immediately following Gemma’s drop-off,” said Jennifer. “Looks like the unsub left her near a loading area in the back, avoiding the main entrance. She was hypothermic, out there at least an hour before a custodian found her on his smoke break. Her hair, which was wet, had started to freeze. She hasn’t regained consciousness, but her parents—who were contacted overseas—consented to a forensic exam. It’s unclear whether she was let go or escaped, and it sounds like it'll be unclear for some time.”
“If it’s the latter,” said David, “she could have flagged down a random car; any Good Samaritan would take her straight to a hospital in her condition.”
“The attending noted her teeth were pulled very recently,” Spencer tongued at his own canines again. “The inside of her upper lip was stuffed with gauze. Hotch is right, these victims were still alive when the unsub started pulling their teeth.”
“So, no small mercies?” Penelope looked up from her laptop.
Derek sighed. “Afraid not, baby girl. Pulling teeth from a live, conscious victim takes strength and time, even if the victim is weakened or bound. Plus, cleanup would be far from a breeze. This cat is seasoned. We could be looking at more victims, dead or alive. Maybe her own children.”
“Or she’s an oral surgeon,” said David.
“Garcia,” said Aaron, “when we break, check with regional poison control centers. See if there have been any reports of AIP poisoning in the last five years. Narrow the age range to older children and teens. Also check with animal poison control centers and hospitals. The unsub keeps circling back to the river; keep your search in Essex County. If nothing turns up there, expand the jurisdictional parameters to the counties where the victims lived. A ritual this specific is honed.”
“On it, My Liege,” Penelope saluted. “I will also peruse Essex County court records for recent ugly custody battles in which the mother was deemed unfit to parent to a moody teenager.”
“Good thinking,” said Aaron.
“They’ve already got a name for the unsub,” said Spencer. “After Mia Sung’s body was found, a police chief out of Taunton coined the name ‘Tooth Fairy’ as a joke, and it stuck.”
“We mustn’t entertain it.” Aaron gave him a dry, pointed look. “It’s not yet been released to the public that Gemma has been found alive or that we’ve been called in, but there are theories surrounding her abduction and linking her to the first two victims. And as you all well know, the press has ways of getting wind of our presence before it’s officially announced. This case is garnering attention from true crime fanatics and theorists; it’s a media frenzy waiting to happen.”
“Nothing the public goes nuts over like dead girls,” David said.
Aaron ignored this. “Boston Division is expecting us as soon as we can mobilize. Our contacts are Special Agent in Charge Corinne Epps and her partner, Assistant Special Agent John Breslin. Between the profile and the impending press circus, we’ve got quite a bit of legwork to do, and we’ll have to split up. Wheels up to Logan Airport in thirty. And Garcia?”
“Yes, My Liege?” Penelope again looked up from her computer.
“I’ll accept ‘The Jedi Council’ if it means you’ll stop renaming the BAU chat group every week.” Aaron stood, smoothing out his tie as he did so.
Once they were airborne, Spencer—after fixing himself another cup of coffee—started in on the geographical profile. He picked a seat facing away from everyone else and smoothed a map out over the wooden table.
The abductions had taken place in three towns and counties. Mackenzie Wynne had been taken from Lexington; Mia Sung from Taunton; Gemma Larkin from a prep school in North Andover. Middlesex, Bristol, and Essex Counties, respectively, though the Larkin hospital drop-off crossed into Suffolk County.
Lexington was about 10 miles northwest of Boston. If Spencer went off the theory that the first abduction, Mackenzie Wynne, had taken place closest to the unsub’s home or workplace, then the unsub operated out of a location in northern Metro-Boston, most likely a residence with ample acreage, set back from main thoroughfare but close to the highway.
With Mia Sung, the unsub had gone all the way south to Taunton, which was 18.6 miles from the Rhode Island border by road; closer to Providence than to Boston. The high of killing Mackenzie might have emboldened the unsub to expand territory.
However, with Gemma Larkin, the unsub had struck closer to home base. The Shawsheen River ran through North Andover. If the unsub had made all that effort to travel to Taunton, then why not jump state lines southbound into Rhode Island, expand hunting ground, create more jurisdictional trip-ups? What was it about that river?
Hmmn…
The chiming of an incoming call jarred him, and he peeked around the back of his seat to see the screen mounted to the far wall light up. A solitary blip, and Penelope appeared, looking a bit worse for wear than she had earlier this morning.
“Garcia, what’ve you got?” said Aaron. Quietly, Spencer got up and moved closer to everyone else, taking a seat by Derek.
“Oh boy.” Penelope pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I’m in a staring contest with the abyss, and I’ve gotta tell you: the abyss is winning right now, friends. Do you know how many custody battles took place in Essex County in the last year? Hundreds. And even narrowed down to cases with parental incompetence and abuse, I’d still have to clone all of you three times over. Well, maybe Reid only once. The next new moon is in three days; perhaps this tree is too big to bark up?”
Aaron nodded. “Table it for now.”
“Anywho, I came up empty with poison control, even when I tweaked the parameters. As for animal hospitals, it was always a case of Fido or Garfield getting into the pesticides because they were poorly stored, which is enraging and unhelpful.” The typing stopped. “Aluminum phosphide tablets are cheap and accessible. Like, scary accessible for their mortality rate. I could walk into a Home Depot and buy a four-pound bag of it for less than twenty dollars. And get this: it comes in fish flavor.”
“Yikes.” Spencer pulled a face, and Penelope laughed.
“But fear not,” she continued, “for I was not entirely fruitless. I did get an update on Gemma Larkin: she’s been stabilized, and her forensic exam is still ongoing, but as soon as it’s complete, evidence will be rushed to the MSPCL in Danvers. Thanks to Yours Truly, everything related to this case has been stamped Priority.” Penelope took a deep, cleansing breath and smiled over her octopus coffee mug. “Don’t everybody thank me at once.”
Derek blew her a kiss. “You’re a Godsend, Mama.”
“Did you find out anything else about Larkin?” asked Aaron.
“Looks like the poor girl had a rough time of it growing up.” Penelope shook her head. “Anxious older parents unable to deal with an anxious kid, so they resorted to some questionable methods. Looks like there were a lot of behavioral concerns early on in her life, and she was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and some sort of learning disorder in late childhood. She floundered in the public school system but was accepted to Fletcher Preparatory, which is, like, the Harvard of secondary schools. Apparently, she has the makings of a literary prodigy. There, she thrived academically but struggled socially; her academic advisor, a Ms. Darcy Maddox, looks out for her. It should be noted that Darcy Maddox is also Gemma’s cousin, but the two families were never close. But judging by her school records, Gemma seems to have imprinted on Darcy Maddox like a baby duck.”
“Maddox might know more,” said Derek. “A misunderstood kid at an elite school full of trust fund babies? That’s gotta be brutal. There’s a good chance that Maddox is the only person that Gemma Larkin trusts, and the first person she ever trusted in her life. She’s listed as one of Larkin’s emergency contacts.”
“Epps mentioned the hospital got in touch with Maddox earlier this morning,” said Aaron. “She’s probably there now.”
“What about the parents?” Alex asked.
“The parents are moneyed and overseas,” said Penelope, “The British Consulate got ahold of them, but they won’t get in ’til tonight, and Darcy Maddox is staying with Gemma in the meantime.”
“Wait a minute,” said David. “Darcy Maddox. I know I recognize that name from somewhere; it’s been bothering me all morning.”
Penelope started typing, and a newsprint article popped up on the screen, along with a washed-out author photograph: ‘Abbott Snags Darcy Maddox’s Debut Novel, Meet You There Someday, in Nine-Way Bidding War.’
“That’s her!” David snapped his fingers. “Abbott, my publisher, just took on her debut. There’s an uncorrected proof lying around my house somewhere.”
Alex leaned in and began reading something off her screen. “‘Meet You There Someday tells the story of two kindred souls driven apart at sixteen and reunited at thirty. What remains unresolved between them is the tragedy that separated them in the first place. Nuanced, emotionally intelligent, and with banter that will leave the reader in stitches, it is both a romance and a coming-of-age story.’ Wow. That’s profound.”
Jennifer looked over at Aaron. “And here you can’t even figure out when to use its and it’s.”
“One time.” Aaron didn’t look up.
Alex said, “You’re lucky Reid caught it before the report went out for review.”
“Goddamn, this Maddox woman is almost as much of a Luddite as our resident Boy Genius,” Penelope said, and everyone’s tablets chimed at once. “Like no social media whatsoever, even though her upcoming book is getting tons of hype. Website is pretty bare bones.”
Derek tapped on the link to Darcy’s “About” page, frowned, then chuckled at something. Spencer had already scanned it, and it wasn’t very comprehensive: just the same washed-out author photograph and a short bio. But he knew what was coming and was dreading it. “Hey, Reid, says here she’s a Vegas native. You know her?”
“I do,” he admitted.
“You’re serious?” Jennifer’s eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah, we both went to Las Vegas High School. She only took a couple of advanced classes there while I attended full time, but yeah, I knew her. She was the only other prepubescent kid in a classroom full of high school seniors. I wouldn’t be surprised if she received a high-figure advance; she was verbally gifted.”
Alex laughed. “What are the odds?”
Derek said, “You knew a novelist before she made it big?”
Yeah, a novelist who never wrote me back. Spencer cleared his throat. “She was more of an athlete than I was, though that’s not a high hurdle to clear. She also had more social status than I did—again, not a high hurdle to clear—because she was an athlete, and so was her older sister. But even though she was of good social standing, she was always cautious.”
“Well, it looks like she carried that into adulthood,” Jennifer said, scrolling through her tablet. “No social media presence or content other than what her publisher and agent put out, and that’s pretty recent. Looks like she goes out of her way to disengage online.”
“Smart girl,” said David. “Lord knows my editor gets a barrage of true crime sickos in her inbox every morning. Before email came along, there were letters asking for crime scene photos and confession transcripts, autopsy reports. I’ve even gotten a few marriage proposals.”
“And which wife did that lead to?” Derek asked.
“I’ll have you know that my courtships were proper ones, and I no longer engage with groupies. I’m David Rossi, not David Bowie.”
Penelope’s head snapped up. “Hey—”
“Guys,” said Aaron, “let’s not get too sidetracked, please? Garcia, there might be a commonality between the victims that we’re overlooking. I know you’re loath to do this, but I’ll need you to dig further into their lives, where they went in their downtime. The sites they frequented. They could have overlapped somewhere, maybe in more than one place, and that’s how the unsub might be finding them.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n. P.G. is exiting the chat.” Penelope said, though Spencer caught an edge of reluctance in her voice. Another solitary blip, and the screen went dark.
Aaron said, “Reid, let’s see your map.”
“One sec.” Spencer leaned over and carefully moved the unfolded map from table to table, smoothing it out with his hands. Everyone snatched their coffee cups out of the way. “The case covers four counties: Essex, Middlesex, Bristol, and Suffolk. The principal locations make a sort of sideways Z-shape, starting in Lexington, then south to Taunton, then back north to North Andover and then south again to Boston proper, a rough total of 79.1 miles, and that’s not counting the mileage from the abduction sites to the home base, or from the home base to the dumpsites on the river.
“Shawsheen River is 26.7 miles long,” —He followed the blue ribbon of it with the tip of his pen— “flowing northward until it empties into the larger Merrimack. For this unsub, that northern portion of the river is hallowed ground. If we center the geographical profile around it, it can be gleaned that the unsub operates out of a location in northern Metro-Boston, perhaps just shy of the New Hampshire border. Based on the three abduction locations, I’d give about a 60-mile radius.”
“It would be remote,” said Derek. “Almost certainly a residence, maybe repurposed farmland.”
“Given the meticulous lengths taken to evade detection,” David said, “I’d venture that the unsub pumps their own water and supplies their own electricity. Someone this thorough would go to great lengths to dodge any sort of monitoring or metering.”
“Hmmn,” Jennifer said, “and keeping a teenage girl captive for a month causes a significant uptick in water and electricity usage, not to mention sewage and evidence disposal. I wouldn’t want to risk National Grid seeing a spike if I were the unsub.”
“The question is: why the Shawsheen River?” Alex leaned her chin on her hand. “Moreover, why wait for a new moon? What could that symbolize?”
“It could tie into victimology somehow,” David ventured, “or the unsub views the river as her stomping ground.”
“With regards to the new moon phase,” Spencer said, “it often symbolizes new beginnings, a more introspective time during which one’s encouraged to look to the future and plan. The unsub takes a hiatus between new moons before taking another victim. Moon cycles average out to 29.5 days, an ample cooling-off-slash-planning period for the type of meticulous, experienced offender we’re looking for. Furthermore, women whose menstrual cycles align with the new moon are said to be more introverted, with stronger intuition than their counterparts.”
Jennifer pulled a face at him. “You’re seriously factoring menstrual cycles into the profile because the unsub might be a woman?” She crinkled her nose. “Come on, Spence, that’s just…”
“Doctor Spencer Reid, anti-feminist,” Derek mumbled.
“Not what I meant, sorry.” Spencer looked away, his ears warming. He hadn’t anticipated his response could come off as sexist; he was often slipshod with tone and nuance in conversation. “You asked, ‘Why wait for a new moon? What could that symbolize?’ and I was simply answering your question.”
“There’s obviously a lot to unpack here,” said David. “Why the new moon? What does the unsub do with the teeth? Is taking the teeth a forensic countermeasure, etc., etc. The kid’s got a good start on the geographical profile, but at this point, everything is still pretty nebulous.”
“And victimology is gonna be tough. These girls have nothing in common apart from their age range,” Derek sighed. “Maybe their commonality is only apparent to the unsub. We only have three days before she strikes again.”
“Which is why I’ve prioritized talking with Larkin and Maddox.” Aaron turned to Spencer. “Reid, you said you knew Darcy Maddox somewhat. How well is ‘somewhat’?”
Spencer shrugged, trying to keep his voice steady. “We were friends. She ran cross country and track, liked to read. We both stood out because we were so young; we’d always get thrown together for class projects. We, uhm, sort of looked out for each other too. Even the bullies left me alone when I was with her.”
“Sounds like a spitfire,” Alex said.
“She knew how to land a blow, and then some,” Spencer fought a smile. “And she knew where to land it so you’d back off.”
“Oof, ouch.” David winced, crossing his legs.
“Then you head to Boston Children’s,” Aaron said. “Gemma is in pediatric intensive care and won’t be in any condition to talk, but speak with Maddox. With all she’s going through, it might ease her mind to talk with someone familiar.”
Derek laughed. “A Unit Chief who moonlights as a matchmaker. Who knew?”
Spencer’s ears warmed, and he stared at his knees. “I doubt she’ll recognize me. It’s been twenty-two years.”
“Well, she’s a smart girl,” said Alex. “She’d have to be, to keep up with you as a class partner. I’m sure reintroducing yourself will jog her memory.”
Derek elbowed him in the ribs. “Yeah, don’t you want to make this easier on her? Give her your shoulder to cry on?”
“Of course I want to help her as it pertains to the case.”
“Sure, sure.” Derek flipped Spencer’s hair into his eyes. “And if she happens to lean on you in the process…”
“Be careful.” David stuffed his tablet into his carry-on bag and leaned back in his seat. “One wrong move and she could end up penning a story about you.”
“Well, I think Spence would be well-matched with a writer,” Jennifer chimed in. “Don’t you, Blake?”
Alex smiled. “I’m inclined to agree.”
Funny, Diana sometimes said the same thing. “Knock it off, guys. I’m telling you: she won’t recognize me.”
Derek winked at him. “Still, your glo up will have her jaw on the floor.”
Spencer frowned, slinging the hair from his face. “What’s a glo up?”
“Seriously? See, that question coming from you of all people; that right there is irony.”
“Let’s stay focused please,” Aaron put up a hand, though Spencer could see he was trying not to laugh. “JJ, you and I will go to the Boston Field Office and apprise them of our thoughts. We’ll also need strategize with their PR Specialist on how to handle the media; I’ll have you take point on that. Blake, go with Reid to Boston Children’s Hospital. Pull security cam footage from last night into this morning and have it sent to Garcia. Dave and Morgan, I’ll need you to speak with the Sungs and the Wynnes; a liaison has alerted them to expect you. Afterwards, speak with Taunton and Lexington PD, the staff at Mia’s dance studio, compare accounts, and see if anything stands out. We’ll reconvene back at the field office later this evening. Everyone try to rest up before we land.”
After fixing himself another cup of coffee, Spencer returned to his solitary seat with his map. But as they made their descent into the low-slung winter light of Boston, he found it increasingly difficult to focus. It was clear what Darcy saw in Gemma Larkin: herself. Just after her sister’s high school graduation, Darcy’s family had moved to a quiet suburb not too far from here: a good school system, a good place to raise children.
Darcy’s parents—with whom Diana had once been friendly—had been dithering over this move for a couple of years. Spencer had a pretty good idea of what had finally kicked it into motion, though he didn’t like to think about it and there seemed to be a gag order around it. It was only ever referred to in euphemisms. Darcy’s mother refused to speak about it.
Besides, Massachusetts was one of the top healthcare states in the country, and Darcy’s father was a psychiatrist. A friend from medical school had gotten in touch, said he was going into private practice and could use some extra hands.
It didn’t seem to matter to her parents what Darcy thought about the eastward move. After the incident, they just wanted her pulled from the Vegas school system; Spencer was surprised they let her finish out the year. She griped to him that she didn’t want to go to Boston: the winters were bitterly cold; she balked at the idea of starting at a new school when everyone else already knew each other. The morning she moved away, Spencer saw her off, and she promised to write, something she’d stopped. Save for one clumsy phone call in a moment of weakness nine years ago, which her boyfriend had interrupted, he’d never heard from her or reached out to her.
The summer following her departure had been lonesome. Bright, arid days with no air conditioning in the house; days he often spent in the library or in the park playing himself in chess.
When dusk fell, he would make the long walk home alone, watching the sun go down in a florid explosion. By the time he got back to the house, sunburnt and stippled with mosquito bites, the first stars had started to appear. Constellations he and Darcy used to point out from her screened-in porch, which had become a place of refuge and laughter.
The Maddoxes were kind to him and didn’t pry, which was more than could be said of other families in the neighborhood. Darcy’s older sister, Nora, who was friends with Harper Hillman and Alexa Lisbon and who picked on him at school, treated him with deference at home. During especially rough periods, Spencer could rely on the Maddoxes for a hot meal; pre-cooked dinners he brought home on Sundays so Diana wouldn’t have to worry about food for the week. Darcy was the first person to believe him when he said his mother hadn’t hit him on purpose.
Despite the circumstances and his recent loss, Spencer found himself exhilarated at the prospect of catching up with his childhood friend.