CHAPTER NINE:
RULES FOR VANISHING
( aka 03x11: birthright )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS STARTED THE DAY with a Mariah Carey song crooning through the downstairs speaker interrupted by the clatter of pots and pans. Groaning, she rolled over in a twist of pale blue sheets, gazing up at the ceiling of the spare room in her parent's house. It took her a second to remember how she got there.

The night before was family dinner night as well as a celebration for Anthony and Hope's twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Anthony made lamb cutlets, Dallis brought a strawberry cheesecake from her mum's favourite bakery. They got drunk on champagne and Hope convinced Dallis to stay the night instead of driving home late. Austin's apartment was in the next street over so he stumbled his way back there a little after 2am.

Despite the thumping in her head, Dallis still smiled when she heard Anthony singing along as the song changed to one by Kate Bush. Hope's laughter was warm and admiring as she admonished him for overcooking the bacon. For a moment, it was like Dallis never grew up.

Someone knocked on her door. Hope waited for Dallis to call out before poking her head inside.

"Morning, sleepyhead," she beamed, coming to stand at the end of the bed. "Still feeling that champagne?"

Dallis groaned. "How are you not?"

"Fifty-eight years of life, my dear. You better get up. Your phone's been ringing nonstop."

"Shit." She'd left it in the kitchen to charge overnight, convinced that someone would've already called her if they had a case. Guess not.

"Language," Hope briefly narrowed her eyes. Just as quickly, her smile returned and she clapped her manicured hands together. "How should I tell Anthony you want your eggs?"

Dallis forced herself to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the bed. Her mum had graciously let her borrow a set of her tracksuit pants and one of Austin's old football jerseys to sleep in. Folded on top of the dresser was her crushed work uniform. She'd make sure to grab it on the way out. "Let me get back to you on that. I might need something quick to go."

"Yes, well, you make sure you're back from wherever your work takes you before the weekend," Hope said as the two red-haired women walked down the stairs side-by-side. "We're throwing Mei and Austin a going-away party before their trip to London."

"Yes, I know," Dallis glanced at the side of Hope's sharp jawline.

Their family and friends often said that Dallis looked just like her mum when she was younger. It wasn't until she turned forty that Hope adopted a short bob that was simply 'easier to maintain.' Dallis figured she had five good years left before the middle-aged mum brain set in and she chopped off her beautiful curls.

Anthony looked up from the carton off eggs he was holding with a cheeky grin. "You're heading into the office like that, Dally?"

Dallis scoffed. "Aren't you full of jokes, Anthony."

"You bet. Now, scrambled eggs or poached?"

Dallis hesitated in answering as she saw the several missed calls from JJ followed by one familiar message.

JENNIFER: We're heading to Fredericksburg. Need you in the office in an hour.

That was twenty minutes ago.

"Can I skip the eggs and take some toast to go?" Dallis turned to her parents.

Anthony sighed. "Get changed and I'll have it ready for when you head out."

"Thanks," she popped a kiss to his bearded cheek.

Making her way outside, she popped the hood of her Nissan where she kept her go bag. Inside were brown ankle boots, a pair of jeans and a pale yellow silk shirt fitted around the chest but flared around her torso and biceps. She changed in the downstairs bathroom, cleaning her teeth with a spare toothbrush still in its package before raiding her mother's makeup and hair products. Hope was waiting outside the door with her uniform and another set of clothes from her own wardrobe.

"In case you need an extra outfit," Hope held up the black pencil skirt and white button-down that Dallis had seen her wear in the past to job interviews. She also had Dallis' heels hooked over her arm from the night before.

"You're the best," she said as they entered the kitchen. "Both of you."

Anthony held out a slice of toast. He'd also made her tea and put some bacon strips in a container.

"Love you," she called on her way out the door.

Everybody but JJ was in the conference room when she arrived at the office with ten minutes to spare. "No JJ yet?"

The voicemail she left Dallis had sounded withdrawn, more than she had in the past few weeks since the incident where she took Baylor's life. Something was bothering her -- the incident or the case or both, Dallis hadn't figured it out yet.

She glanced at her watch once another few minutes had ticked by. "Should we check on her--"

Dallis was interrupted by the quick tap of heels in the hallway as JJ appeared with a towering stack of files to pass out. She scanned the seated figures around the table with wide eyes. "Oh. Everyone's here. Sorry I'm late."

Dallis glanced at Hotch, expecting some kind of reprimand, but he was also watching JJ with furrowed brows. He remained tight-lipped as he accepted the file JJ held out to him, sitting back in his seat in expectant silence.

"Right, okay," JJ turned to the screen, bringing up a photo of a smiling dark-haired young girl. "Last night in Fredericksburg, a twenty-year-old woman, Molly McCarthy, was abducted. She's the third to go missing in the last six weeks. All disappeared from public places and no one's seen them since."

"Until now," Rossi said as the photos shifted to up-close shots of battered limbs.

"A couple days ago, body parts with cigarette burns were recovered from a national park which was once the site of the Battle of Chancellorsville."

"Were they able to make an ID?" Hotch asked.

JJ nodded. "It was the first victim taken six weeks ago. Decomp indicated that she had been dead just over a week."

"So he likes to take his time," Dallis remarked, subconsciously tugging down the hem of her skirt as she crossed one knee over the other, finally removing her gaze from JJ to pay proper attention to the photos of the screen.

"How'd she end up like that?" Emily pointed to one photo of a bloodied arm.

JJ grimaced. "ME found microscopic tool marks on the bone."

"Microscopic?" Dallis echoed with a frown. Every torn limb was viciously removed. If one thing was clear, the unsub wanted these poor girls to feel every ounce of pain he inflicted on them.

"I remember reading about a case like this in Spotsylvania County," Reid commented. "Similar markings on the bone."

"It was the winter of 1980," JJ confirmed. "Also Fredericksburg. Five women, aged sixteen to twenty-four, buried in pieces, same markings, same Civil War battlefield."

Dallis let out a surprised breath.

"Killed the same time of year and left at the same dump site?" Rossi repeated with a frown.

"It's like an anniversary," Morgan pointed out.

"For the original unsub or a copycat?" Dallis wondered.

JJ shrugged, declaring, "That case is still open."

"Back then, the victims were drug addicts and runaways," Reid recalled.

"And now he's going for twenty-year-old college girls?" Dallis frowned, idly tapping her fingers on her thigh. "If it's the original unsub, why the change?"

Hotch sighed. "If he spends that much time with them, there's a chance these two women could still be alive."

"But if this is the same killer, that's a hell of a cooling-off period," Emily didn't seem too convinced.

Dallis wasn't so sure either. Twenty-seven years was a long time. The original unsub would be much older in age for one thing. It made more sense for it to be a copycat, someone who was intrigued by the legends of unsolved community murders whose sick interest developed into a story of their own. They couldn't rule anything out, of course, as Morgan was quick to point out.

"BTK resurfaced after a twenty-five year hiatus."

Reid nodded at this. "True, but he didn't kill anyone. He only taunted the police."

The conversation lulled for a moment as they finished looking through their files. JJ stood in the centre of it all, arms folded as if to shield herself, staring at the photos on the screen. Dallis couldn't see her face, only the back of her head. She waited for her to turn. When she did, it was to the sound of Rossi clearing his throat, almost immediately commanding the attention of everyone in the room.

"The marks on the bone and the dump site," he stated. "That's a very specific signature. Hard to copy details that were never made public."

"Garcia, check the MO against girls missing in other states," Hotch turned to their technical analyst. She'd worked a few cases since being reinstated by Fuchs but this was the first time she'd presented herself in the conference room, back in her glory with her hair freshly curled and a new pair of cat-eye glasses on display. Dallis had greeted her with a warm hug that Garcia had enthusiastically returned, nearly healed from the wound now free of bandages. "It could explain the long absence."

"I'm on it," she darted off back to her Bat Cave.

"If this is the same unsub," Rossi said. "What's he been doing for the past twenty-seven years?"

"That's what I'm wondering," Dallis agreed.

The drive to Fredericksburg from Quantico took them thirty minutes. While Hotch, Reid and JJ checked out the dump site with Sheriff Ballantyne, the rest of the team including Dallis arrived at the police station. One of the officers directed them to a good place to set up. They weren't long there before a voice -- older, male -- called out to them.

"Am I in the right place?"

Dallis glanced over her shoulder from one of the boxes she'd just carried in. Following behind herself and Rossi was an elderly man. Rossi must've known who it was, for he immediately went to shake his hand and introduce himself.

"David Rossi."

"John Caulfield."

Oh, so this was the original sheriff who worked the case twenty-seven years ago. He'd garnered a reputation, from the bits she'd heard in passing. According to the rumours -- if rumours were to be believed -- this case was the tipping point for a downturn spiral in John Caulfield's life.

"Good to meet you," Rossi said, then turned to the rest of his team. "Agents Dallis Cohen, Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss."

"Just going over your old case, sir," Morgan said in lieu of a greeting.

They watched Caulfield's face visibly slacken with horror. He shuffled forward with his cane to get a better look at their things, immediately recognising one of the girls in a photo Dallis was holding.

"Oh, that's Sharon Chroniger. She was sixteen-years-old. May I?" Nodding, Dallis handed him the photo. He must have needed glasses to read, for he held the photo up close to his face, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing. "We found her body in pieces. I promised her parents I would find out who did this. Then her father passed away."

Dallis knew firsthand that some cases stuck out more than others. She remembered one of the first cases she ever worked with the team where several teenage girls were kidnapped, raped and murdered. It sounded like a lot of cases she worked on now, but she recalled every detail of their faces as the first true glimpse of horror she'd seen up close. Just recently there was Jonny McHale, who suffered a psychotic break after his fiancée, the mother of his unborn child, was gang-raped and murdered.

Sometimes, your brain chose things to cling to without reason. This was one for John Caulfield.

"Tell us what Fredericksburg was like in 1980," Dallis requested, wanting to get a better idea of how much -- or how little -- this town had changed.

Dallis had only been to Fredericksburg once when she was a kid. She couldn't remember the specifics. She was only four or five, so it would've been just before the original unsub picked his first victim. Dallis' mum was notably absent but her dad and Austin were with her. They stayed only one night then moved onto the next town.

"It was a farming community, rural," Caulfield shared as Rossi brought a seat over for him to rest in. "Everybody knew everybody. You could leave your doors open at night."

"Town homes and housing communities are everywhere now," Emily said. "It could explain the change in victim type."

Morgan nodded in agreement. "Runaways and prostitution to college students. He's taking what's available."

Caulfield frowned. "It's not normal for a killer to stop for twenty-seven years, is it?"

"No, but sometimes there are incapacities that can't be avoided," Dallis said. "He might not have had a choice."

"Like what?"

"He could've been in prison, injured," Morgan popped his shoulders. "He might have moved away."

"He must've found other ways to satisfy his needs," Rossi remarked.

The words seemed to crawl under Caulfield's skin and make themselves at home.

The next day, another body was found.

Hotch, Reid and JJ attended the crime scene once again, leaving the others to contend with a grief-stricken Caulfield. He'd fled outside not long after the news reached the station where he'd sat hunched over on the stairs ever since. Rossi had gone to check on him. Dallis, as Morgan returned from a nearby coffee shop with their drink orders, caught a glimpse through the window of the two sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. She waited a moment, unsure if she wanted to interrupt, then grabbed the tray with their slowly cooling coffees and her tea to make her way outside.

"Only me," she said. "Got your coffees here, if you're still feeling up to drinking them."

She sat down next to Rossi in the early-morning haze, stretching out her legs clothed in her blue denim jeans that flared around her ankles. Setting aside her tea, she handed Rossi his black coffee and Caulfield his flat white. Both murmured a quiet thank-you, but Dallis could tell from the lingering silence that she'd interrupted something meaningful. Deciding to head back inside, she was surprised when Rossi grabbed her hand, keeping her right there next to him.

"I want to show you something," he said but he was looking at Caulfield.

Dallis's cup froze mid-way to her mouth when he held out a familiar gold bracelet. In truth, she hadn't thought much about it since his defensive response at the hospital, storing away the memory for another day. She wasn't sure what made him choose then in particular -- whatever honesty Caulfield had extended to him must've struck a chord in that padlocked heart of his.

"I carry this wherever I go."

Caulfield stared at each charm curiously. Connie, George and Alicia.

"Are these your kids?"

Rossi shook his head. "Indianapolis, Christmas Eve. One of my first cases on the job. Three kids watched their parents get beaten to death. Every year, I call to tell them I haven't forgotten. I'm still looking." He took the bracelet back from Caulfield, clutching it between his fingers like it was something to be revered. "Last year, not one of them bothered to return my call."

Sometimes, life moved on. For those kids, it would've been at least twenty years spent with no resolution to the murder of their parents. Dallis couldn't possibly begin to understand how that would feel, but she could piece together why they might have given up. Still, life was different for everyone and like Dallis with her first case, Rossi also remembered his.

With a comforting hand on Caulfield's back, he helped the older man to his feet. Caulfield shuffled back inside, immediately setting his sights on Morgan and Emily. Dallis and Rossi hung back.

"Why did you let me hear that?" she asked as he stood a few steps above her.

Rossi carefully returned the bracelet to his pocket. "You told me to let you know if I ever needed help with what I'm doing."

Dallis nodded. "I did say that."

"Does the offer still stand?"

"Of course," her smile was soft as she moved to stand beside him. She rested her hand on his arm. "You know, you have a good heart, Dave. Use it to solve this case then we'll get those kids -- and you, too -- some well-deserved closure."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"I'VE GOT A LIST of violations in this country that precede the 1980 murders." It was back to business once they returned to the others. Emily held out a considerably long list of records. "DUI, petty thefts, rape, assault. A few of these were repeat offenders."

"We could have the name of our guy here," Dallis peered over Rossi's shoulder at the list.

Emily nodded. "Maybe."

Morgan approached with his phone on speaker. "Garcia's got something."

"Don't worry, it's not contagious," she quipped, making Morgan roll his eyes and the others share a brief smirk. "So, I have dug across the whole country looking for this guy's MO. I found a sum total of zilch, so I went closer to home. I found a complaint filed by a Karen Foley in the next county over. The story's... awful. I sent a copy to all your handhelds. The PG version is that she was kidnapped in 1979, but then she escaped."

"I never heard that story," Caulfield frowned.

"It wasn't your jurisdiction," Rossi said. "What if she was his first?"

"Like his dress rehearsal," Morgan theorised. "Figure out who and where to hunt. Learned what would work, what didn't."

"Maybe careful planning has always been a part of his process."

"Where is she now?" Emily asked.

Morgan raised his phone to his mouth where Garcia was still waiting on the other line. "Baby girl, work your magic and find us an address."

"Have we considered that Karen Foley might not want to speak to us?" Dallis pursed her lips.

Rossi shrugged. "We've got to try."

It was decided that Morgan and Emily would go to her house but they weren't gone long.

"Karen Foley recanted her story," Emily approached them, grim-faced. "You were right, Dallis."

Dallis sighed, turning away from the cork board where she was pinning up a picture of Molly McCarthy. "I wish I wasn't."

"Do you think she's lying?" Rossi asked them.

"Something happened to her," Emily insisted. "She avoided eye contact, shielded herself. She got very defensive."

"Just afraid to admit it happened," Morgan concluded.

"She couldn't open that door," Rossi said. "Afraid she could never come back."

"Well, right now, the only person she's protecting is the offender."

"But we can't force her to relive traumatising memories," Dallis crossed her arms. "We tried, that's all we can do. She might change her mind, but right now we should focus on what we have."

"You didn't see her, Cohen," Morgan insisted. "We just told her that this guy could still be out there. She wasn't even concerned. She wasn't scared at all. Why?"

This made Dallis pause.

"Maybe she's got nothing to be afraid of," Rossi's eyes widened.

"Now where are you going with this?" Caulfield asked.

Rossi regarded him for a moment. "Why can't someone let a case go?"

"Because in your gut, you know the son of a bitch is still out there..."

"Exactly. Only she doesn't blink."

Dallis had a feeling she knew what he was implying. Karen Foley would only know the unsub was gone if she was positive he wasn't around to hurt another girl again.

"She'd only move back here because she thought it was safe," said Morgan. "So the guy who actually did this to her either moved away or died."

"You know who this man is," Rossi put a hand on Caulfield's shoulder. "He grew up here too. He was in his mid-twenties back then. He left after you found his last victim."

Caulfield recalled the date easily. He had it committed to memory. "December 13, 1980."

"He might've gone to prison, could've joined the military. Moved away, sold his property," Morgan suggested.

"He was reckless in his personal life," Emily added as Dallis quickly jotted down a few points.

"He would've been heavy with his alcohol," she glanced up at Caulfield through the wisps of her fringe. When she got back home, she'd need to have it cut. "He would've had arrests for DUI, maybe other petty crimes. Small things you'd initially overlook for a case of this magnitude."

"And this is your case," Rossi affirmed, pointing a finger at Caulfield's chest. "He was meticulous, so he may have had two areas of control. Both private. One to torture and one to confine them."

"A workshop, maybe. A barn, a garage even."

"December, 1980. The man was here and then he was gone. You know him, John."

All of a sudden, Caulfield planted his index finger on one of the names on their list. "Robert Wilkinson."

"Three DUIs," Emily compared this with her own notes. "He spent a few days in jail."

"Well, he's dead. He was twenty-eight when it happened. He fell into his combine harvester."

"When was this?" Morgan asked.

Emily let out a breath, declaring, "December, 1980. Right when the killings stopped."

"Karen Foley moved back soon after that," Rossi said.

"Was he survived by anyone?"

"A widow," Caulfield recalled.

"Does she still live in the area?" Dallis asked. He nodded. "Then it's worth talking to her, see what she knows."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

ROSSI APPROACHED WHERE DALLIS, Emily and Morgan were waiting outside Robert's widow, Mary's, house. Dallis had been busy analysing the property. It was quiet, located on a secluded corner of a street with a big front yard and porch. An elderly grey-haired woman, who must've been Mary's mother, sat knitting in a rocking chair by the front door. The house was one-storey, painted white with green trims. There was only one other car in the driveway apart from their own.

"She doesn't seem too upset," Dallis remarked, gazing over Rossi's shoulder at the woman in question. She was caught in a quiet conversation with Caufield in the front doorway.

"She wasn't surprised," Rossi replied. "She didn't even ask why we thought he did it."

"So she suspected him," Dallis concluded.

Rossi nodded. "He was a drunk. She got pregnant and left him."

"Abandonment," Emily commented, tilting her head. "Might've had the same thing with his mother. Either way, he can't handle it. It's his stressor, he starts killing."

"Madonna-whore complex," Morgan said. "He couldn't touch his pure wife, so he had to find disposable girls."

"But the killings stopped when he died. So who's doing it now?"

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"THERE'S BEEN ANOTHER ABDUCTION," JJ declared as she and Sheriff Ballantyne, who Dallis was yet to meet, came striding into the station.

"Name's Tara Ricker," Ballantyne informed as they all sat to attention. "Family called this morning, she didn't come home last night. We're still trying to locate the vehicle."

"Well, we know he kills after he takes another victim, so we're running out of time here," JJ stressed, throwing her hands up for emphasis.

Hotch thought over their options. "Alright, what do we know?"

"Definitely a copycat," Emily began. "Same MO, same dump site."

"Only you never released any of that to the press," Rossi addressed Caulfield.

"No," Caulfield confirmed.

"He had to learn it from someone," Reid insisted. "A family member? A friend maybe?"

"What if he was related to the original unsub?" Dallis suggested, building off Reid's theory.

"Mary and Robert Wilkinson had a son," JJ pointed out.

Caulfield's wiry brows furrowed. "Are you suggesting there's a genetic predisposition to killing?"

"It's one factor, along with psychology and socialisation," Hotch answered.

"If you have a combination of genetics and a son who grew up without a father, searching for his own identity, it could be a stressor," added Rossi, who, out of all of them, Caulfield seemed to value his word the most.

He reconsidered the theory, some of the blood draining from his face. "I remember when Charlie Wilkinson was fifteen, he killed a neighbour's cat. He put it in a bag and hit it against the tree."

"Sounds like a troubled teenager to me," Dallis mumbled.

Emily seemed to agree. "How old is Charlie Wilkinson?"

"Mary was pregnant with him when Robert died."

"So twenty-seven years," Dallis said. "Roughly the same age Robert would've been when he started killing."

Garcia, ever their saving grace, called Morgan at just the right time. He didn't wait for her to greet him, something Dallis had made the mistake of one too many times with people around and a blabber-mouth Garcia on the other end of the line. He knew she'd only be calling if she found something worth mentioning.

"What you got for us, girl?"

"I just found the reason why Karen Foley was lying."

"Go on..." Dallis prompted.

"She has a son."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

EVERYTHING WAS COMING TO a head. Karen Foley had a son, Stephen, but he wasn't the one committing the murders. He was full of anger, like his half-brother, but it was Charlie Wilkinson walking in their father's footsteps. They initiated a search of his house where they came across his pregnant wife, Chrissie, and a barn with a bloody axe and chains hanging from the ceiling inside it. Still, Charlie was nowhere to be found, and his mother and Chrissie knew little that could help them track him down, so they turned to Karen Foley.

Karen approached the open doors of the barn pale and shaky on her feet. Emily had to guide her with a hand on her elbow. Just the sight and scent of the place took Karen all the way back twenty-seven years. At first, she said nothing, unable to find the words. Then she spotted something over Emily's shoulder.

"Who's that?"

Emily followed her gaze. "That's Mary Wilkinson."

"The wife?" she gasped, and her fear evolved into fury.

Dallis glanced warily at Rossi and Morgan, who were also watching the exchange.

"Maybe we should've moved Mary before bringing Karen out," she mumbled.

Karen's voice grew into a croaky scream. "He tortured me every single night. Could you hear my screams? Did you kiss him when he was finished with me? What did she think he was doing in that barn every night? Did you ask? Did you ask why he wanted to be away from you? Why? Why didn't you stop him? Why didn't you help?"

"I killed him!"

Dallis froze.

Mary seemed to forget the dozens of police that surrounded her. She couldn't stop looking into Karen's teary eyes.

"Before Charlie was born. I came home, and I saw this place, and I knew what he had done, and I couldn't let my innocent baby be brought into this."

Yet he'd grown up and left his innocence behind.

Once Karen had calmed down, they managed to take her into the barn and walk her through her memories with Mary joining them. Their efforts lead them to the North side of the property where a rocky hillside towered over their heads. Locked in a grated cave was Tara Ricker and Molly McCarthy but there was still no sign of Charlie.

He was waiting at Chancellorsville. Chrissie found him and gunned him down. For her baby.

Life was a cycle of repetition. Birth, life, death. Love and loss. Dallis hoped that this new baby wouldn't follow in the footsteps of their dad and grandfather, that she would never have to return to Fredericksburg, a place of broken memories, to hunt down the next Wilkinson killer.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS WAS WELL AND truly wrecked by the time they got back to the office and finished up their paperwork. As she picked up her bag and powered down her computer, Morgan approached her desk.

"Who's up for a drink?" he asked.

"Ooh, who's up for five?" Emily suggested.

"Count me in," said Rossi, who had come down from his office for once to sit with them.

"Me too," Dallis grinned. "A bottle of red, any bottle, is calling my name."

"I don't know," Reid trailed after them, unsure.

Morgan scoffed. "Oh, stop with the 'I don't know.' You're in, kid. JJ?"

"I'd love to, but I'm going to have to take a rain-check."

Hotch came downstairs but Rossi stopped him from walking past. "Hotch, you up for a beer?"

"Sure."

But someone else calling Hotch's name put a pause in their plans.

"Agent Hotchner?" asked the man holding a yellow envelope.

"Yes?"

Almost immediately, his polite expression shifted. He accepted the envelope without a word, signing his name on the man's clipboard with his entire team there to witness it. Dallis had a feeling she knew what was in that envelope. He held it away from him like it was a bomb ready to explode. In a way, it was. His life was being rewritten, ripped from his control.

"What is it?" Emily asked.

"Haley's filing for divorce. I've been served."

With that, he left the room, head bowed.

Dallis turned to the others. "Wanna make those five drinks ten?"

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

A/N: So I've decided I'm going to skip a few episodes where Dallis won't play a major role. If I like the episode, I might include it for the sake of it, but I can't realistically write every episode for several seasons lol