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gryfflepuffinthetardis · 2 months ago

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The Fox

Season One Masterlist

Machismo

Natural Born Killer

Summary: There is an unsub killing families of a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter in Maryland and Virginia who were thought to be on vacation before being found dead in their homes.

Warning: References to the death of children; Talk of unchild-like behavior; Mention of Emily Prentiss; Reference to Season Twelve Arc, Zoe being kind of mean to Garcia

"You will catch the fox with cunning and the wolf with courage." — Albanian Proverb

Doctor Thomas Fuller wrote, "With foxes, we must play the fox."

Jack Hotchner (even though Hotch had stated he didn’t want his son to have the same name as a serial killer but chose the name of one of the most infamous) was born October nineteenth, 2005, exactly nineteen days ago, the first (known) child of the BAU since Zoe and his birth had been far less scary than her own, twenty years ago. He was finally meeting his BAU family. He seemed to be so sleepy as Hotch held him.

"He's so gorgeous." Zoe said, showing a whole new side to her.

“Thank you.” Haley said, beaming with pride.

“If you find baldness and wrinkles attractive.” Spencer said.

“Look at his little witty bitty nose.” Garcia cooed.

“He is so cute. Cuter than I ever was.” Zoe said.

“Zoe, you were a cute little baby.” Alexander scolded his youngest.

“No. Zarah was the cute baby. I was the baby that everyone was concerned about and the stillborn.” Zoe deadpanned.

“Briefly! They resusitated you! Before I had a heart attack at twenty-one. And I mean, yeah, you said your first word at six months old and by nine months, you could speak full sentences. And by three years old, I found out Rossi let you interview Ted Bundy.” Alexander had to agree that Zoe did cause quite a bit of worrying with her unchildish-like behavior and fascination with true crime and serial killers.

“Well, he was being executed in January.” Zoe deadpanned like she didn't see what was wrong with that.

Garcia changed the subject as Morgan approached and JJ looked at Zoe, incredulously, “Don’t you want one of these.”

“Mm. I’ll just stick to practicing.” Morgan snarked.

"Zoe?"

Zoe looked at Garcia with an initially incredulous look that slowly formed into a deadpan look which usually meant Garcia was being unintentionally insensitive. In this case, the man who killed her mother got off on killing both pregnant women and their unborn fetuses

Elle came over and said, "Congratulations.

"Thanks. She's amazing. I'm a little terrified." Hotch said.

"Rightly so." Zoe said, obliviously, adjusting the

"Zoe." Alexander scolded his youngest.

"What?" She asked, still oblivious. "Shush! He'll get cold! Speaking of cold, colds in newborns are not usually serious but it can develop into more dangerous conditions if left untreated. A fever of 100.4 or higher under three months is considered an emergency and should go to the hospital. And babies can suffocate in unsafe sleeping positions, the safest sleeping position until age one in on their backs, this can refuse the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by up to forty-five times and gravity makes it harder for spit up to enter their airways, which can prevent choking. And infants have a higher percentage of body water than adults and since they can't communicate their thirst, they're espeically suspceptible to dehydration.

Spencer nodded in approval, not realizing how horrified they were making everyone else. Haley looked espcially horrified.

"Are you trying to give us both heart attacks now?" Hotch deadpanned.

"Maybe." She said. "Ever heard of paternity leave?"

"Zoe."

"What? I was last BAU child, and I was a disaster." Zoe said.

"You'll be fine, Haley." Alexander reassured her. "I raised two girls who were too smart than any baby should be that their age."

"We should get going." Haley said, seeing Elle had cases in her hands.

"A pleasure seeing you, Mrs Hotchner." Spencer said, formally.

Haley put baby Jack back in the stroller and rolled him into into the elevator.

"Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?" Hotch asked Zoe.

"What?" She asked, incrediously.

Elle handed out the files with a heavy sigh.

"Bad?" Hotch asked.

"The worst." Elle said.

They arrived to the briefing room where Gideon had put up the photos of the crime scene and victims on the board. "Crawford family. Murdered three days ago."

"I saw it on the news." Morgan said, entering.

"They were found in the basement of their house." Gideon said.

"Bags packed for a vacation they never took." JJ added.

"Reporter said it was a murder-suicide? The father stabbed them all and then shot himself?"

"That's the conclusion Maryland State Police came to. The gun was found next to the father, he had gunpowder residue on his right hand."

"That's usual. Two different weapons in a murder-suicide." Zoe noted, frowning. She personally knew a person or two connected to a murder-suicide... or attempted one.

"And now you must have some compelling reason to think that Chris Crawford didn't off his family?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah. Another murdered family, the Millers, found a month ago." JJ said and put down a photo of a family. "The mother, Reese Miller, her two children and her new husband. Again, they were found in the basement, and like the Crawfords, their suitcases were packed for a vacation."

"Both cases, the bodies were discovered five days after their vacations were supposed to have started." Gideon said.

"Yet the coroner determined that they had been dead only twenty-four hours." JJ added.

"So, for four days both families remained in the house." Spencer noted.

"Location of the bodies in both cases, the basement. That indicates a level of organization." Gideon said.

"With a quick but disorganized application of overpowering force." Morgan added.

"If these aren't murder-suicides, someone's doing a damn good job of making them look like it." Spencer said.

"Possibly this man, Eric Miller." JJ said, holding up a mugshot photo of a man. "Biological father of the Miller children. Arlington PD issued a BOLO for Miller after the bodies were discovered."

"Ex-wife Reese Miller had a restraining order against him for domestic violence." Gideon said.

"When did she get remarried?" Morgan asked.

"The week before they were killed." JJ said.

Morgan sighed and said, "Violent husbands believe their wives and children are property. Reese Miller getting remarried possibly made him snap."

"I don't know." Zoe muttered, her instincts told her it was just too easy.

"Well, the Virginia cops finally located Eric Miller last night responding to a drunken disturbance at a motel, where Miller had been hiding out." JJ said. When they found him, they discovered blood on his black leather jacket. It belonged to his children."

"Was any of his DNA found at the Crawford house?" Morgan said.

"No." Gideon said.

"Did he know the Crawfords?" Morgan asked.

"If he does, he's not saying. In fact, he hasn't said a word since his arrest." JJ said. Spencer picked up the suspect's photo and raised his eyebrows in surprise at the look of the thuggish-looking man. "The Arlington PD have asked us to interview him."

"Oof, if anyone could apply overwhelming force, he's your man." Spencer commented.

"I want you and Zoe to find out. Talk to him." Gideon said,

"You-you want us to, uh, talk to him?" Spencer stuttered.

"Yeah, you've both done interviews before with other agents running point. You can do it together." Gideon said.

"Yeah, the last time, I was up close and personal with a criminal, he kicked my ribs in while saying some very inapporate words in Russian. This should be fun." Zoe deadpanned, causally.

"You interviewed multiple serial killers and cult leaders since you were three." Alexander deadpanned. "You spoke to Ed Kemper multiple times that you had such a rapor that he often complimented your intellect."

"And bombers and arsonists and kidnappers and terrorists. What's your point?" Zoe said with a defensive tone at the mention of the example.

"Did she just say terrorists?"

"Well, it wasn't so much an interview as them punching me and shouting at their professional torturers." Zoe said, again with that casualness.

—————————————————————————————

Spencer awkwardly fumbled with the door handle as Zoe watched before he finally opened it.

"You know, a door." She snarked.

He gave her a look before turning back to Eric Miller.

"I'm Doctor Spencer Reid and this is Doctor Zoe Noble-Valdez. We're from the FBI." He said as he opened the door for Zoe and closed it behind her.

"We'd like to ask a few questions, if you don't mind." Zoe said with a polite smile.

"You two got something you wanna ask me?" Eric spoke in a gravelly voice, "you look me in the eye, and you ask."

Zoe sat down as Spencer took his bag off and followed suit, sitting next to Zoe.

Spencer cleared his throat and looked through the file, "Three days ago..."

"You're not looking at me." Eric said.

Spencer looked him in the eye, still anxious and spoke, "Three days ago, the Crawford family was murdered."

"Is that right?" Eric said, passively.

"Did you know them?"

"What are you getting at?" Eric asked in a soft voice that Zoe recognized not only from that of roughened criminals but of her own. The kind that foreshadowed a danger in them. The want to be intimidating to survive.

Spencer opened the file and took out a photo of one of the Crawford family's bloodied hand from the morgue, peeking under the sheet.

"They were killed in the exact same way that your family was killed."

"And?" Eric asked, "I've been slapped around all night by every cop in Virginia. What makes you think a damn photo is gonna scare me?"

Zoe noticed he was cynical that they would actually get anything done. And as she knew from his profile, he had a long history of violence that stemmed from his childhood of near constant abuse, added in that he was an African-American in Virginia where at best he was two times more likely to be pulled over just for driving and his ex-wife, her new husband, and his children were found dead and he had their blood on him. From the look at it, his injuries weren’t just from the brawl but agitated police too.

Spencer looked down thinking and Eric hit the table abruptly with his handcuffed hands, making Spencer flinch. Zoe, however, didn't react at all, she just looked at him with the same professional, near apathy, she almost always had. "Is that what this is about, hmm?" He was getting angry.

Zoe didn't see sociopathy in him though, she saw hurt only caused by the heartache of a parental figure. She remembered that look from her childhood when Alexander would talk about Zelena. She remembered that look during the amount of the investigation for her sister after she had come back in her dad's eyes. The look in her dad's eyes when they told him that the kidnapping of Zarah Noble-Valdez had been marked a cold case. And every day since. The grief of a father.

Zoe briefly glanced down at Eric's handcuffs hands. They were brusied from throwing punches and... he was still wearing his wedding ring.

"You think I'm crazy? You think I suddenly snapped and I slaughtered my own wife and kids?" His voice broke with rage and mourning and exasperation. "You think I did this? Huh?" He slammed his fists back onto the table, making Spencer flinch again, albeit less violently as Eric furiously stood up. "IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK!?"

The guards restrained him as he stood up, making Spencer stand up, more out of fear of being attacked as his professional facade cracked as Zoe remained as calm as ever, staring up at Eric with no fear, showing more how that prison had traumatized her than at first glance. She had learned not to flinch long since before that, now it wasn't even an instinct to flinch.

Then Hotch, Elle, and Alexander came in, "Mister Miller, sit down now."

"IS THIS YOUR DADDY!" Eric shouted.

"Actually, I'm her's." Alexander said, placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder. “Agent Alexander Noble. Don’t you dare yell at my daughter.”

"I'M DONE TALKING TO YOU PEOPLE!" He shouted.

Zoe finally spoke, speaking as calmly as she usually did, a stark contrast to Eric's emotional screams just a moment ago, "We don't think you're crazy. We work with the Behavior Analysis Unit, we're trained to study the neurological reasonings of criminals. We are psychological profilers." Zoe nodded at Spencer, "Doctor Reid, here, is extremely socially awkward... like there's socially awkward and then several levels up there's Doctor Spencer Reid."

"Zoe." Spencer hissed.

She looked at him and nodded at Eric like, do your thing, superbrain.

"You don't have to talk. Just listen.” Spencer said, “on the—on the occasions you assaulted your wife, you were intoxicated, once the effects of alcohol wore off, you were overcome by feelings of remorse.”

“Which indicates that it’s less of what you truly wanted and more of habitual tendencies you picked up as a child.” Zoe added.

“I’m gonna tell you this just one time, you two shut your mouths!” Eric shouted at them.

“Genetic factors contribute to alcohol stress interactions. Your-your mother was an alcoholic, and she was often too drunk to stop the beatings that your father gave you."

"I think we should stop this." Elle suggested.

"They're not finished." Hotch said.

"They know what they're doing." Alexander said.

"Age six, you were orphaned to a family where the abuse continued, only..." He faltered slightly before continuing, "this time it was sexual."

"None of this was your fault but they made you feel like it was and like you were crazy if you even considered otherwise." Zoe said.

"You both shut your mouths or I'm gonna rip your faces off!" He snapped.

Alexander tensed, giving him a glare at the threat against his "surviving" daughter.

"The abuse continued well into puberty..."

"You became an angry young man, history of violence, drugs, and drinking." Zoe added.

"But my..." He glanced at Zoe, "but our one concern is, Eric, did you or did you not continue the cycle with your own children?"

Eric who had been on the verge of tears this entire time, seemed to be on the verge of breaking down now as he looked at Spencer as if the thought both horrified him but had been one he thought about much too often.

"I never laid a hand on my children. YOU HEAR ME!?"

Spencer nodded and said softly, "I hear you."

"You can't imagine what I saw." He still wasn't opening up. "You can read what I've been through but you can't understand the pain."

They were almost there, Zoe could see it. They just needed one more push. If there was one thing she understood more than criminals or mental health, it was pain caused by trauma and the darkness it inflicts upon someone.

Zoe took a deep breath and leaned forwards, placing her intertwined hands on the table. She spoke calmly but her words were filled with horror and trauma. "My twin sister was born in a hospital three days before me because a deranged madman, that my parents were chasing down, threatened to kill my newborn twin sister, forcing my dad to flee with her, and he kidnapped my mom while she was still in labor with me. He tortured her for days while she was still in labor and then he killed her, just because he could. Because he knew she would put her unborn child with no life above hers. He got off on that kind of thing. Killing pregnant women, letting their fetuses slowly die inside them. My dad found her barely alive with multiple axe wounds to the chest and I had to be delivered via emergency C-section before I died in her womb. Fifteen years later, my dad was a highly esteemed FBI agent and an UnSub who had become obsessed with me kidnapped both me and my sister and put us in different locations. So we would cooperate, becuase he knew we were smart enough to fight back but if the other was on the line, we wouldn't. We'd take whatever he did for the other. I certainly did. He killed people in front of me, he tried to brainwash me, he tried to break me. I managed escape after nearly a year but my sister hasn't been seen since. Every time I look in the mirror because I am nearly identical to her. I see my reflection and all I see is the fact that she's out there and all I have to keep me going is my twintuition that she's still alive which doesn’t exactly appeal to those who aren’t twins or the cold case intuitive or the police, still bound, still gagged, still tortured, waiting to be saved despite being marked a cold case two years ago, and I'm trying to get justice for other families before they end up like my sister, like your wife and kids, to appease my guilt of being the 'lucky' twin. I do know trauma, sir. I do know pain and darkness and heartache. I have been pushed to the brink by murderers and rapists and arsonists and professional torturers. I have been cut, stabbed, burned, starved, drugged, psychologically tortured, physically tortured, and beaten within an inch of my life. I have had every charge of assault committed onto me more times than you dare to believe because of nothing but sheer sadistic enjoyment, they weren't compelled to do it because of a mental illness, they were just sick in the head and misogynistic. I am trauma. I am pain. I am darkness. But most relevantly, I am not like most cops, I don't assume because you're a scary black man with a bad past of abuse and violence that you committed the crime, or that you're about to, while it's not great you were found with the blood on your jacket, you may still be innocent. I know people that are living proof of breaking the cycle of child abuse." Hotch and Alexander. "I just need to hear your side of the story. Your word may allow us to get justice for your children and while we cannot bring them back, we can stop any more children from dying.”

It was silent as everyone but Alexander looked at Zoe in horror and shock at her words as she stared down Eric with intense eye contact that said as much as her words did.

She had sympathy and remorse in her eyes but she kept her facial features calm and professional. Eric could see it. The darkness that infects someone's soul when someone is mercilessly cruel to them even though they had done nothing to deserve that. The darkness that corrupted an innocent life. The pain that remains. The scars that remain on someone's soul long after the physical wounds heal and the physical scars fade. Yet there was light. It was like light shining through cracked glass but it was there because she resolved to remain a good person who was pure at heart but remained a warrior on the outside to keep from getting hurt again.

"I found them like that." He confessed, he dropped his head down as he finally allowed his tears to fall, "Dead. Bloodied." He looked up as his voice broke, "My babies. My sweet, little babies." The guards let him sit back down, "I-I was crazy out of my mind. I didn't know what to do. And I knew the cops were gonna blame me, and they have."

Alexander was behind his daughter again, pulling her into his chest as a hug, holding on tightly to his last baby as if fearful someone would rip her out of his grip.

"So you ran?" Spencer asked.

“Of course he did, his wife had a new husband and the kids had a new father, he had a history of violence including assaulting his wife while intoxicated, they were divorced, he had their blood on his jacket, he has a history of violence before he even met her and he’s an African-American, he's three-point-five times more likely to experience police brutality than white people. Even if the evidence hadn't been stacked against him, he'd be the first one they'd suspect. It's his natural instinct to run from the police even if he didn't do anything wrong. That's why they never caught the Zodiac Killer. They drove past him, assuming that the Zodiac was a black man."

"So what have I got now?"

"You have your innocence. For the sake of your children. I believe that they, at the very least, deserve the truth." Spencer said and he closed the file.

"I can't get the image of my dead children out of my mind." Eric said as Alexander's grip tightened around the only daughter he had left, "Ty, my little boy, he was clutching a-a piece of paper. I think it was a drawing. May-maybe a painting. Please, I'd love to know what he painted, Doctor Reid, Agent Noble-Valdez."

Zoe nodded and followed Spencer out of the interrogation room, walking quickly past him, trying to swallow the emotion she had been holding back down until she nearly walked into a wall, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Of the image of her sister.

Spencer, Hotch, Alexander, and Elle caught up with her, her father pulling her along to walk with them.

"Interesting interrogation techniques." Elle told the young geniuses, "What did you two hope to accomplish?"

"Well, he was closed off, defensive, hostile." Spencer explained. "I needed a way in."

"And you?" Elle asked Zoe.

"He didn't believe we understood his pain, only that we knew of it. He's right, we can't understand his pain, we can only understand our own. He needed to hear my pain. My past. My trauma. He needed to see that I understood pain, that I sympathized with his pain by explaining my pain to him so he could sympathize with me. He needed another broken soul of abuse, trauma, and assault to empathize with him."

"He's suffered a breakdown, but I don't think he killed his family and I know he still loved his wife." Spencer continued as Zoe refused to look at them.

"Why do you say that?" Hotch asked.

"Even though, they were divorced, he still wore the wedding ring." Spencer said.

"And he never said 'ex-wife', he said 'wife'." Zoe added, "And the murders were meticulous and organized depsite the disorganized force. That is due to some aftermath to a delusional, possibly. That man has no delusions. He's been the jail, he's hurt, he's broken, he's a cynic. A realistic cynic. Like I said, police will naturally blame him, he's a black criminal with a history of violence. Any crime he's committed are disorganized and violent in the moment. But he's not broken enough to kill his kids."

—————————————————————————————

Spencer, Alexander, Elle, Morgan and Zoe sat back in the office, staring at the whiteboard with the crime scene photos on it as Gideon stood in front of it, staring at them.

"I believe the UnSub had control over this family. He may have separated each family member. He tells the mother, 'If you scream, I'll kill your children'. He tells the children, 'If you cry, I'll kill Mommy'. The suspect found a way of restraining them without leaving marks." Gideon said, turning back to the team.

"Based on lividity, the ME estimates that the father was the last to die."

"Which means he witnessed the whole event." Alexander said with a heavy sigh, he reached over and stroked his youngest daughter's hair. He wasn't sure he could take that.

"If he did spend time with both families, he must have known he had the time to spend with them." Morgan said.

"Because he knew they were going on vacation." Spencer added.

"Look at travel agents, relatives, work colleagues, contract workers, children's tutors." Gideon said.

The speaker phone beeped and Hotch's voice spoke through it, "Gideon, we've been looking into the Crawford financials."

"Allison Crawford spent way more money than Chris could afford." Garcia said, "They were in major debt."

"And Chris Crawford wrote a number of cheques for a series of visits to a therapist." Hotch added.

"She had two cell phone accounts. One of them billed to a separate address in Southeast Washington, D.C." Garcia said.

"Did you get that?" Hotch asked.

—————————————————————————————

They kicked open the door of the address, very loudly. Hotch and Elle shouted, "Federal Agent" and Morgan shouted "FBI".

The place was a mess but it was familiar. It was familiarly messy. Her mind immediately went to noting a note of neurodivergence. It was the kind of mess her father would create when he would slip from his medication or when the depression would be too much, if he hadn't had Rossi, or Gideon or their significant others, it would be a lot like this.

"It's the cleanest thing in here." Elle said, referring to a blue dog bowl.

Gideon went to a framed drawing on the wall and he took it down.

"What's that?" Elle asked.

"It's a child's painting. It's a colonial house. Mom, dad, two children out front holding hands." Gideon said.

"And a big dog." Zoe noted.

"I think this is the Crawford house, it's signed by Emily.

"Strange." Spencer mused.

"Yeah, Eric Miller said he found his son clutching a painting." Zoe said. "He wanted to know what was on it."

"What was on it?" Elle asked.

"His son's blood." Gideon said.

"Well, I can't tell him that." Zoe said, irritatedly.

There was a sound of nearby clattering and then the sound of presumably Morgan kicking down a door, followed by the barking of a large dog.

"Hey! Hey, don't shoot the dog!" Zoe shouted, running down the hall.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, easy..." A voice said and whistling, calling the dog over.

It was a big man, standing where the shadows covered him.

—————————————————————————————

Zoe say next to Gideon in the interrogation room across from the man they apperhended, Frank Fielding who Zoe deduced had Bipolar disorder.

"Why am I here?" Frank asked.

"I think you know why." Morgan said.

Frank pointed to the drawing, laying on the table, "That's mine.

"The colors indicate a self-confidence with an outgoing personality. It shows an above-average intelligence. The child that painted this was left-handed. Emily Crawford was left-handed." Gideon deduced.

Morgan tossed a paper wad to Frank and Frank instictively caught it with his right hand. "You're not."

"How'd you get the painting, Frank?" Zoe asked and Frank slowly put the paper wad on the table. "Did you forget to take your meds today, Frank? For a severe manic-depressive, that's not good. My dad has it too."

"They make me feel wrong!" Frank protested.

"Wrong enough to kill the Crawfords?" Morgan asked.

Frank looked up and then back down. He seemed... hurt.

"Frank?" Zoe asked.

I-I did a-a bad thing." Frank stuttered.

"What did you do?" Zoe asked.

"I shouldn't have gone to the house. Allison told me not to. I would never, never hurt Allie. She's the only family I've got." Frank said.

"Family?" Morgan asked.

"She's my sister." Frank said, his voice broke as he repeated, "She's dead. She's dead." He was clearly in mourning. "He killed them. Chris did. I know he did it.

"What bad thing did you do?" Zoe asked, gently.

"The rule was, I was never supposed to go to the house. That was the only rule. Allison said if Chris saw me he would never let me see her again. He was gonna lock me up in the loony bin." Frank said. "He never liked me.

"You went to the house."

"She said she couldn't visit me any more. I just wanted to see her. Seeing Allison made everything better. But they cut my phone off that day. The day I went to see them, they cut my phone off!" He started to get angry, "I never would've gone to the house if they hadn't cut off the phone!"

Behind the glass, Alexander said, "Sounds like Zelena's family." Some hadn't liked him very much due to his disorder.

"There's no way this guy could've gotten into the house without a key. Knowing how Chris Crawford felt about his brother-in-law, do you see him having one?" Elle asked.

"No." Hotch said.

"Frank, you went to the house. What did you do?" Gideon asked Frank.

"It was dark and cold. I went around to the side, to look through the window. My breath steamed up the glass and I wiped it clean. And I could see them sitting down for dinner. I saw Emily and Sam... and Sam was crying. I guess he was in trouble."

"Did you see Allison?" Gideon asked.

"Yes. She was saying grace over the table and then... she looked up and saw me and she mouthed something at me. I think it was, 'Get the hell out'. So I left."

"Did Chris see you?" Gideon asked.

"No, he wasn't there, but a friend was at the head of the table." Frank recalled.

"You said, a friend?" Morgan asked.

"I saw someone." Frank nodded.

"What did this person look like?" Morgan asked.

"I didn't see their face, but tiny, really tiny."

"White or black, Frank?" Morgan asked.

"I don't know, but..." Frank said.

"What?" Morgan said, urgently.

"The hair, it-it-it was red." Frank recalled.

It wasn't Chris at the table.

If Frank saw them that day, it wasn't Chris Crawford at the table. She wasn't saying, "Go away." She was saying, "Help me."

Frank seemed to realize this too, "It-it wasn't a friend."

"Frank." Zoe said, gently.

"It wasn't a friend at all. It was him. He's the one who killed them." Guilt overcame Frank at the realization he could've helped.

"Frank."

"I-I-I-I..."

"Frank..." Zoe said, getting up, sensing a meltdown.

"No! No! No!" Frank started to hit himself in the head.

"Frank, stop." Gideon said.

"Frank, Frank." Morgan said.

Quickly, they pushed Frank against the wall and Hotch came in to help.

"No, No! No!"

"Frank!" Zoe grabbed onto Frank's arms, shouting louder than the team had heard before. "FRANK! CALM DOWN! CHILL THE EFF OUT!" She pushed him against the wall, her being the youngest, still really a child, at barely twenty years old, calmed him down slightly, enough to look at her in shock as she spoke loudly on the verge of yelling, saying each word slowly but not in a patronizing way like most people did but so it could sink in and calm him down, "Calm. Down. You hitting yourself in the head is not going to do anything. There was nothing you could've done. You didn't know. We can still catch that bastard and give Allison, and Chris, and Emily and Sam the justice they deserve and keep this bastard from hurting anymore families. He will pay for what he did to your family."

He started to sob, brokenly.

—————————————————————————————

Frank was committed out of fear of further self-harm and possible suicide due to the realization and him not taking his medications.

"Both families had a dog and both houses had a dog door." Morgan said, pointing to the board."

"Fielding said that the person he saw was small.

"Yeah, well, in order to get through that door, you'd have to be five-four, tops and real thin." Zoe said, shrugging but didn't say anymore as that was classified.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Gideon quoted.

"Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character. Whoever did this isn't."

"Sherlock Holmes was based on a real person." Zoe said, "We can be pretty sure he's probably found himself another family by now."

When they left the room, Zoe was holding Emily's picture, looking at it.

"You okay?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah, just... I know an Emily." She said.

"Oh."

"Doctor Joseph Bell." Zoe said suddenly.

"What?"

"The person Sherlock Holmes was based on. Gideon read them to me when I was a kid. This guy's no Moriarty." Zoe said. "And isn't that quote just behavioral profiling in a nutshell.

—————————————————————————————

"He's been looking at those pictures all morning." Elle said, referring to Gideon. She looked at Zoe at her desk who was staring at pictures of Emily Crawford's drawings with headphones on, somehow simutaniously lost in thought and fully focused "And so has Zoe."

"Well, I sure hope they see a connection, because I've checked doctors, lawyers, travel agents, tutors, contract workers... I got nothing." Morgan said.

"Why target those families?" Elle asked.

"Well, to know that, we have to know how." Hotch said. "Reid, tell Zoe to pause her audiobook."

"Why do I have to do it?" Spencer frowned.

"Because last time Morgan did it, she nearly broke his wrist." Hotch deadpanned.

Spencer took a piece of Dove chocolate—Zoe had gotten him a giant bag for snacking since he often forgot to eat and threw it at her, it missed by a foot but her hand still shot out and she grabbed it. She looked up and he motioned for her to take her headphones off. She did so.

"All right, we know organised killers are often skilled workers with above-average intelligence." Morgan said, getting up from his chair as Zoe unwrapped the chocolate, "A high birth status, and in most cases, male. In the workplace, he's socially confident. And with women, sexually competent. Every offence is pre-planned. Targeting the victim is almost as pleasurable as the actual kill. These guys, they're meticulous. It's a compulsion. Everything has to have its proper place. They do exhaustive amounts of research on their victims. They watch their every move. Every last detail is observed. Everything has to be written ever so neatly in a book or possibly a journal. Like when the kids are coming home from school, when Daddy will be home. Playtime, suppertime, bath time, bedtime. Plan the work, work the plan. This is the way that he maintains control. It's also how he personalises his target. So, nothing's left to chance and absolutely nothing is left out of place. Ever. So, he plans the work. And when he's good and ready, he works that plan. He takes great pride in his job." He sat back down. "I think the workplace has to be the connection."

Gideon came up to them, holding two pictures of a house they had found one with no color in the Crawford's house and one with color they had found in Frank's possession.

"Both are by Emily. Painted months apart. This one... is full of color, life. The one I found at Emily's house has lines, dimensions. No color. I believe Emily was coerced to make this."

"It's a point of view." Zoe realized, kicking her wheelie chair over to him to take the colorless picture, too lazy to get up. "It's his point of view. It must be where the killer stood and just watched the family."

She gave the picture a rather disturbed look, like she was remembering something unpleasant. She was. So Alexander took it from her, she shook her head and rolled back to her previous spot.

Hotch spun a wedding ring on the table, "each of the dead husbands was missing his wedding ring. This is the UnSub's trophy."

"He targets a family because he lost his own." Alexander realized. "For a few days, he gets to play daddy."

"And he can do whatever he wants because no one's gonna come lookin' because they're supposed to be on vacation." Morgan added.

"Let's get forensics to check the inside of Chris Crawford's clothing. The suspect may have worn the father's clothes to..." Gideon scoffed at the word, "Complete the fantasy."

"But why kill them?" Elle asked.

"'Cause the fantasy can't last." Zoe said, darkly.

"What did you say about Miller having no delusions?" Hotch asked.

Before Zoe could reply, Spencer spoke in automatic monotone 'And the murders were meticulous and organized depsite the disorganized force. That is due to some aftermath to a delusional, possibly. That man has no delusions'."

"Zoe, you saw it."

"When the delusion breaks, it can anger them. Make them kill."

"Do we know anything that actually helps us identify this bastard?" Elle asked.

"Wait a minute," Morgan said and looked at a picture of the deceased Crawford family. "Chris Crawford worked for the I.R.S. and Reese Miller was a secretary at the GAO."

"That makes them both government employees."

—————————————————————————————

Zoe and Spencer went to Garcia's lab to assist her.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Reid. People will talk." Garcia teased. "But then, talk is cheap."

"Yeah, I hear H.R.'s considering another sexual harrassment meeting based off your banter with Morgan alone." Zoe deadpanned.

She pulled up a chair with a big bag of chocolates in her lap.

"Talk's not cheap when you're talking to a therapist. The Crawfords made twelve weekly payments to the Applewood Family Center. What about the Millers?" Spencer asked and took a chocolate that Zoe was offering him.

Garcia brought up the Millers' bank records, "No, nothing here."

"How about pharmaceuticals? No one gets therapy these days without a healthy dose of medication." Spencer said.

"What're you implying, Reid?" Garcia asked.

"That everyone is medicated." Spencer said, blankly.

Garcia just looked over, "Did you just make a joke?"

"No." He said, blankly, "Statistics. They show that..."

"Reid, next time, just say 'yes', okay?" Garcia interrupted.

"Well, he's right before you so rudely interrupted him. After I was kidnapped, Dad tried to make me do children's therapy and but I instead defied everything the therapist said and Gideon's wife suggested PTSD medication."

"You were kidnapped when you were twelve?" Garcia asked, aghast.

"I don't remember any of it. And it's not the time for me to remember it." Zoe said, sharply as if trying to drill that into their brains and she didn't want to talk about it.

"Now, medication normally requires a reimbursement from the HMO and since she works for the government like we do, we share the same health care provider." Garcia said as Zoe took out her phone and started to hack Garcia's computer as ease.

"Are you hacking into the government's HMO database?" Spencer asked. "Is that legal?"

"Of course not. We'll both go to prison and you'll be someone's bitch." Garcia said. Oh, how she will regret that in twelve years. As a certain someone really rubs that in.

"Really?" Spencer asked, blankly.

"Mmm. If that ever happens, I think you'll feel like the bitch yourself. Having been to prison myself, I know you wouldn't last a week, Garcia. That's why you took this job. They don't allow unicorns." Zoe deadpanned and then she slapped Garcia's hands.

"Hey!"

"I'm a medical doctor, Garcia, unlike Mister three-PhDs here. I have access." Zoe said, typing on her phone and it brought up the HMO database on Garcia's computer.

"How'd you do that?"

"I hacked into your computer." Zoe said, blankly.

"When?" Garcia asked, seeming floored.

"Uh, like twenty seconds ago." Zoe said, "You are aware I'm the one who caught you and made the profile when you were a criminal and goth, right?

"No! How'd you do that so easily?"

"I'm a better hacker, I guess. And who do you think was the technical analysis before you? Only you get paid and as I was a child, I was not. I know these computers as well as a UnSub's mind. Look."

Zoe had been controlling the computer remotely and Garcia saw it and chose to let go for the time but to complain about it at length to Morgan later.

"Good call, Reid. Mrs. Reese Miller, Diazepam."

"Who prescribed the meds?" Spencer asked.

"Doctor R. Howard at the Applewood Family Center. Let's find out what he looks like. Here we go." A picture of a woman came up. "Doctor Howard isn't a 'he'."

"Thanks, Garcia." Zoe said, sarcastically.

"Well, how about I hack into your file!" Garcia said, pettily and then attempted to but like with most of the FBI files, they were wiped clean. "What!? How!?"

Zoe patted her on the head and walked out of the office. Spencer watched her walk out.

—————————————————————————————

Hotch, Morgan, Alexander, and Gideon went to Doctor Howard's place of work and learned the the UnSub's name was Karl Arnold.

"Of course." Zoe sighed.

"What?" Spencer asked.

"He was the child therapist I went to. He had me draw houses but there was something off about him. So naturally I sassed and defied him as much as I could. I kept drawing upside down houses or ones from books or H.H. Holmes' murder hotel. " Zoe said.

—————————————————————————————

Zoe met up with Gideon and Morgan at the next family's house, the Dunkins, on her motorcycle. The SWAT used a thermal camera to see into the house through the closed curtains. "We've got three adults and two children sitting at the dining room table. They moved in, stealthily and they kicked the door in.

"FBI! FBI!"

Jackie, the young daughter ran into the mother's arms and the mother cried, "He's got my baby!" The father was all bound and gagged.

"Ma'am, is he alone?" Morgan asked.

"Yes, he is!"

"Where's the basement?" Gideon asked.

"Under the stairs!"

Zoe took off running even when the lights went off, Karl's doing no doubt. She opened the door beneath the stairs and walked down without the flashlight. There was enough light coming through the window from her. Gideon and Morgan soon followed

"Karl? Karl, it's the FBI." Morgan called through the darkness.

He nearly jumped when he shined it on Zoe's face.

"What the... why didn't you have a flashlight?"

"Don't need it." She said, moving through the darkness of the basement.

Suddenly she clicked the flashlight on and spun around, shining the light on Karl Arnold who shushed them as he swaddled the baby, smirking.

"Karl, why don't you give me the baby?" Zoe said, calmly, approaching as she was the smallest, youngest, and less intimidating-looking, it had been years since she saw him. She saw him when she was twelve but he had creeped her out so she left to return to Harvard where her best school friend had helped more than any therapist had, and you couldn't really argue with her because she was held captive for eight months

"Karl? Please."

Karl glared at her as she approached slowly, side-stepping, he recognized her but she had to try.

That's odd, she noted, the baby wasn't crying. Her eyes darted down and she spotted him smothering the baby. He was suffocating him.

"Karl, get your hand off the baby's mouth." She said with more authority, a note of danger in her tone.

He slowly did so and the baby started to cry.

"Okay, good. Karl, look at me. I'm gonna put my gun away... and I want you to hand me that baby." She said gently as the baby screamed and cried.

Karl slowly stood back up as Zoe holstered her gun at the same speed and held out her arms, approaching slowly. "Give me the baby."

Then he got a deadly glint in his eyes and threw the baby at them.

"NO!" Zoe screamed and caught the baby as Karl went to fight. He brandished a knife at Morgan as Zoe handed the screaming baby to Gideon and she took out her gun.

BANG!

The bullet grazed Karl's neck.

"The next one stays in you." She threatened.

"You look familiar." He said with a somewhat mockingly curious lilt of his voice.

"Stay there."

"Have I treated you before?" He pretended to remember, "Xiomara or are you Zarah? Both left the house in February of 2001, didn't come back home to your FBI daddy."

"Shut up." She growled.

"You showed up eight months later, thinner and paler than you were before, cut and bloodied but your sister... never found. You never accepted that she was dead because of you."

Morgan slammed Karl against the wall by the throat, "You move or say one more word to her and I will break your neck."

—————————————————————————————

Zoe arrived back at the BAU before them in time, to set up the board just as Gideon had asked and wait for them.

Morgan angrily clutched the chained Karl's arm as they directed him out of the elevator.

"How'd you get here so fast?" He asked.

"Motorcycle."

"You shouldn't ride a motorcycle. They're death machines." Karl said with mocking sincerity.

"Shut up!" Morgan hissed at him, yanking him past Zoe who followed.

He was friendly to everyone he saw as if he hadn't just tried to smother a baby but they all stared at him. When he got to the glaring JJ he asked, "How are you?"

"Keep it moving." Morgan said, pulling him past JJ and Zoe and Gideon stopped

"Did he say anything?" JJ asked.

"No." Gideon said.

"Nothing helpful." Zoe said.

"Can we tie him forensically to the other crimes?" Gideon asked.

Negative on foreign DNA. He must've washed Crawford's clothes." JJ sighed.

"Then we'll need a confession." Zoe said.

"Can you get one?" JJ asked.

"Did you do what I asked?" Gideon asked Zoe.

"Yeah. He won't be able to help himself." Zoe said and went to join Morgan.

—————————————————————————————

Zoe and Gideon sat across from Karl in the interrogation room while Morgan stood.

"Emily Crawford was a very talented and gifted girl. Her brother Sam, a bright, energetic child. You watched them from the yard for days, maybe even weeks. You learned everything about them. You studied their every move and then you wrote it all down." Gideon said but Karl seemed more interested in staring at the board Zoe had set up.

"May I have a glass of water?" Karl asked.

"Something wrong?" Zoe asked with no politeness in her voice.

"No, I'm just thirsty."

"Water, please." Gideon told Morgan.

Karl held up his shackled hands, "could you remove my shackles? I'm clearly no threat to you."

"Do you think we're stupid? They stay on. You just killed two families and were about to kill another and you threw a one-year-old baby at us." Zoe scoffed.

A uniformed officer handed Morgan a cup of water and he placed it in front of Karl.

"You chose families that reminded you of the one you lost." Gideon said as Karl drank his water.

"You stalked them. You bound them. You terrorized them. And once you knew if they weren't seen soon, people would get suspicious, so you killed them, one by one, making the dads watch so they would suffer, watching their families leave them like you did. " Zoe said, "We have your journals. Your serial killer memoirs. You aren't the only one who learned about me during our sessions, even at twelve I was a pretty damn good detective."

"It's my job..." Karl sighed, "to write everything down. To get to know them. I can't help them solve their problems without knowing background. And I make home visits... sometimes without their knowledge because people lie. You, of all people, should know that."

"Yeah, well, you're supposed to talk with them until they understand their emotions and open up to you, you don't stalk them. Sometimes people aren't aware of the psychological trauma and toxicity families can inflict on one another." Zoe said.

Gideon held up a picture of the Miller family and then of the Crawford family.

Karl nodded and looked pointedly at the first family he had killed, "Eric Miller was a terrible husband and father. Allison Crawford hemorrhaged money her husband didn't have. It can strain any marriage."

"That doesn't mean they had to die." Zoe said, darkly.

Gideon held up a picture of Karl with his wife and his kids, he got a somewhat annoyed look in his sociopathic eyes like, are we really bringing my family up? Isn't the psychology of what I did and its connection to my family close enough.

"On the surface, this looks like any family, USA. Two parent households, two kids, a boy and a girl. If you look a little closer, you'll see their body language tells a different story." Karl seemed to be increasingly annoyed at them pointing out the flaws of his failed marriage, "the woman and children are distant from the man. Their smiles are stiff. Their eyes are frightened. Every hair is in place, wearing their Sunday best, their own private hell being memorialized on film."

"Eric wasn't perfect at being a husband but he grew up with constant abuse from his biological and foster parents. That normalized violence in his subconscious mind and only came out when he was drunk. Sure, it's a shitty thing to do but that's what therapy is for. Not with therapists like you, good ones who didn't murder people because he judged them. He never hurt his kids. He loved his kids and because of you, not only did he grow up with constant abuse and feeling no love but he's forever traumatized with the images of finding his son and his daughter's bloodied bodies. You put him through what you went through but worse. Your children are still alive but you hurt them with your obsessiveness and need for control." Zoe monologued, pointing an accusatory finger at him.

"What about your mother? You never had a mother figure."

"I don't hold a family hostage to make up for the mother who died because of someone like you."

He looked at the photos and squirmed uncomfortably but not from what he had done but from what Zoe had done... with the pictures.

"You okay?" Gideon asked.

"It isn't right."

"What isn't?"

"YOU'VE GOT THE PICTURES MIXED UP!" He screamed. "The one in the middle. That is Sam Crawford's. It should be Ty Miller's! You need... to swap them. You need to make it right."

Zoe recalled Clara's OCD and how Karl's matched up with the symptoms just as she previously theorized.

Gideon stood up and pointed to the picture of Sam Crawford's corpse's child-like foot. "This one here?"

"What the hell have I been trying to tell you?" Karl scoffed as if they were the insane ones when he held families hostage, pretending to be their "daddy" to compensate for the marriage he screwed up.

"You're right. They're switched." Gideon admitted with more calmness than Karl. "This is Sam Crawford's foot with the Miller family. But how did you know that, Karl?"

He looked at Zoe who gave him an innocent look. She had switched them, knowing he would have the near uncontrollable urge to correct them. He had confessed to the crime because they had no concrete proof that he had killed the Crawfords and Millers as he was going to do to the Dunkens. So he explained as they recorded him.

"And I watched them for a number of days, always at night. Saw how they lived. How they loved. I would keep them apart... until the last night. Till the last supper. Then I would bring them one by one. Down to the basement." As he spoke J.J. switched the photos on their board, according to the serial killer's confession, "The youngest first." He looked at Zoe, who had been the youngest of her family before it got messed up. "The father last."

"Why, Karl?" Morgan asked.

"So he could see..." His voice broke but not out of remorse but out of hurt of the ending of his family, "What happens to families when the head of the household... isn't strong. Wives wither. Children perish." JJ and Gideon started to pack up the crime evidence. "But me? I'm an excellent father.

"One family member isn't the strongest. There is no Alpha. They're strongest together. Strong where they're weak, Karl. Omegas don't last long alone but as a pack, that's how they're at their strongest." Zoe said.

—————————————————————————————

Hotch had found tapes of more than the two families, not only were there the Miller family, the Crawford family, but also the Ness family and the Linford family, and the Kegan family.

In a rusted box were the trophies...

They all sat at a table that the box laid on and Gideon emptied the box onto the table, revealing eight wedding rings. Six families they weren't aware of. This comes out to thirty-two victims if he kept the same M.O., and half of them were children.

—————————————————————————————

*Sorry, this is super late to my like zero fans of this work but I like this story and Zoe will evolve as a character and so will her relationship with Spencer... very slowly. At first, I was nervous about this chapter, I guess because of the content, this was the first Criminal Minds episode that really affected me because I had watched crime shows before but like, Lucifer, the Flash, etc. When kids were in danger, they always survived in the end but I guess that's one of the things that makes Criminal Minds different. Then I had to email my college because I hadn't been accepted yet and by the time he had accepted me, it was too late to enroll so I took another class at community college and then that class started but then a few weeks in, I was dropped because the financial aid study thing I was taking, general had been recently dropped and I had like no warning about it. Then we decided I'd just do other things for class like online and then the Mothman Festival came up and I had tickets to go see Watcher Ghost Files Live and that was just a few days ago. I've continued writing, I'm almost done with Unfinished Business and then I just forgot I hadn't been posting them. *

#the eccedentiast #david tennant #selena gomez #criminal minds #spencer reid #2005 #valentía #zoe noble-valdez #aaron “hotch” hotchner #derek morgan #Karl Arnold #The Fox #Penelope Garcia #jason gideon #November 2005 #Xiomara Noble-Valdez

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