CHAPTER TWELVE:
ANGEL OF DEATH
( aka 03x15: a higher power )

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"HEY, SO EMILY WAS looking for some narcotics, my burning love hunk," Garcia said to Derek as he approached Dallis and Rossi the next day. "And I scored humongously."

The corner of Dallis' mouth raised up in a smirk. "Brave of you to admit it so openly, Garcia."

"I know, right?" she giggled. In the background, they could hear the loud, chaotic sound of her acrylics tapping away on her keyboard. "Anyway, I ran every toxicology panel known to man on the victims and came up with zilch, which means he must be knocking them out with a neuromuscular agent."

"With a what?" Morgan blinked.

"A paralytic," Rossi clarified.

"Yeah, something like Succinylcholine or Vecuronium," said Garcia. "Something that would metabolise in the body so quickly it wouldn't be detectable. Plus, I also called me up Mr Coroner, and said 'how would you do this?' and he says 'by injection.' So I say 'hey guy, wouldn't that leave a mark?' and he's all 'hold up.' Then he goes and looks at Beth Smoler's body and he finds a mark, a hole right in her hairline."

Dallis' eyes widened. Well, she hadn't expected that.

"Okay," Morgan said. "So you'd have to be in the medical profession to get a hold of those drugs, right?"

"Not necessarily. You can get almost anything online these days."

"And this drug leaves no trace?"

"None," she confirmed.

"Even if the coroner was looking for something, the evidence is gone," Rossi pointed out. "Then Smoler didn't see anything coming."

"No, sir," answered Garcia. "She completely saw it coming. They all saw it coming. Neuromuscular blockers only paralyse the muscles temporarily while you remain very much awake."

"It fits the profile of this guy," Dallis remarked. "He wouldn't be satisfied if they were oblivious. He needs them to feel everything he does."

Rossi let out a tired sigh. "So he sedates them, then quickly engineers their suicide."

"Well, if that's true, then it means this unsub isn't looking for the glory of the kill," Morgan declared.

"No, but unfortunately for his victims, they're wide awake when he decides it's... time for them to move on."

"Still begs the question of how he's getting close enough that he can inject something into their hairline without them struggling," Dallis frowned. That part didn't make much sense to her.

Neither Rossi or Morgan had an answer.

By sundown, they were called to another crime scene following reports of a gunshot being heard. They found Curtis Fackler dead in his living room, the carpet soaked with a crimson stain. Beside him was a pistol just out of his reach that the police had highlighted with a yellow cone. Dallis kneeled beside it and Curtis' body, careful to keep the flared hem of her pants from dipping into the blood puddle. The positioning of the gun wasn't quite right. What chance would the victim have had to drop it if he was already dead?

"The barrel was placed right there, under the chin," said the coroner on the scene, whose white latex gloves pressed carefully to the hole in Curtis' chin. "He shoots, and the bullet went up through the small and hard pallet of his mouth. Then it exited out through his--"

"Cranium," Rossi said, receiving a hum of agreement. "Check the back of his head. His hairline."

"A puncture word," the coroner confirmed a moment later. Dallis squinted for a better look, seeing the miniscule mark that even she wouldn't have looked twice at in a case like this. "Made by a--"

"Needle," Rossi concluded.

He nodded.

"Did he leave a note?" Morgan called out to the police searching the kitchen.

They returned with the detailed piece of paper, handing it to Morgan.

"Alright, Dallis, Rossi, I'm in," he said after quickly scanning over the words. "We got ourselves an unsub."

"About time you saw sense," Dallis grinned, standing up and dusting her hands on her pants. "An unsub who is losing his patience. These kills started off two weeks apart. Now we've had two in barely forty-eight hours. What does that say about when we should expect another one?"

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THE FEELING OF TIME slipping away from them was acute as they returned to the station where Reid and Emily had come up with a new theory -- the unsub was targeting his victims through a support group. Each suicide note read as an amendment to themselves. It sounded like something you would write as you worked your way through the five stages of grief, a letter of letting go, but not in the way this unsub made it appear.

Now, they had the issue of approaching each group in the general area of Shadyside Rec where they were met with far more resistance than Dallis had anticipated. She supposed it made sense. Everybody who joined these groups seemed immensely protective of each other's emotions, finding a sense of camaraderie in knowing their suffering was universal. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, and each person she and Rossi spoke to left her feeling doubtful.

"We should head back," she sighed, flicking a glance down at her wristwatch. "Hotch said to be at the station by four."

"Let's just try one more person," Rossi insisted from where he leaned beside her against the fence. In front of them, the last of a group who had met inside the local church parted ways into the cool, grey-skied afternoon. Rossi laid eyes on one man and started forward, leaving Dallis with little choice but to follow. "Excuse me? Do you mind if we take up a second of your time?"

When the man paused, frowning at them, Rossi held up his badge. "I'm Agent Rossi and this is Agent Cohen. We're with the FBI. We're investigating the man responsible for the recent killings in the area. You've heard of them?"

"It's all over the news," he nodded.

"We believe he might be part of one of the support groups in the area," said Dallis. She made sure to be careful with her wording, not wanting this guy to get the wrong idea as she went on to explain their unsub's behaviour. "Does that sound like anyone in your group?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"You're sure?" Rossi pressed as Dallis sighed, letting her pen drop from where she had it posed over her notebook. Apart from a few inevitable dead ends, she had nothing written down. They just had to hope that the others might have discovered something more substantial. "He might've brought up suicide."

The man's frown shifted into a sad smile. "There has been a lot of suicide talk lately."

"And still no one comes to mind?" Dallis asked.

He went to shake his head again, but then he paused. "You know, there was a guy who talked about his brother's suicide. It was... pretty intense."

Dallis was quick to reach for her pen.

Back at the station, they divulged what they'd been told.

"This guy stood up and told a story about his brother," Rossi said as their team and Baleman listened on. "His family were so poor, they--"

"They shared the same bedroom until they were fifteen."

Rossi went quiet. He and Dallis stared at Hotch, who had been pacing the room until the specifics of their story caught his attention. "He's moving from group to group. Repeating it."

Rossi, frowning, continued, "He said his name was Peter and that his dad was a professor at Brassard..."

When his dad would come home at night, he'd come upstairs and get into bed with Peter's brother, who he called James, and touch him inappropriately.

"The worst part of it is that he pretended to be asleep when it happened," Dallis concluded, flicking her notebook shut.

"If it's true," Hotch let out a hesitant sigh. "It could be what started our unsub on his mission of mercy."

"It certainly didn't end well," Rossi grimaced. "At least not for James, the older brother."

Who Peter had found with bloodied wrists one night. The story was violent and detailed.

"Okay, so we've got two names," Emily said once Dallis and Rossi were finished. "James and Peter."

Hotch nodded. "And a university. Brassard."

"Would this unsub use his real name, though?" Dallis wondered, taking a seat at the table opposite the computer where Garcia was listening on. "The brother's name, maybe, but something about sharing his real name feels way too personal."

"If he has, it makes it easier for you, Garcia," JJ commented.

"And if the unsub's father really taught at Brassard, chances are he's local," Rossi said.

Reid hesitated, catching everyone's attention. "Angels of mercy, they repeat the same event over and over again."

"Okay," said Morgan. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, if, as you said, the story's true, then he's leaving one key piece of information out. The event that started it all."

"His brother didn't kill himself," Hotch sighed.

"Peter did," Emily's eyes widened.

"The fire caused such grief and suffering that it became a trigger."

"And unable to stop himself, he targets someone he believes needs his help," said Morgan.

Reid nodded, pointing out what Dallis had noticed at the scene of Curtis' murder. "At first, he kept to some kind of timeline, a few weeks. But the last two kills were within days."

"He's devolving," Rossi murmured.

Garcia gasped on the other end of the call. The clicking of her keyboard suddenly paused. "It's from 1984. It's a Brassard College university newspaper."

Emily frowned. "Garcia, they lived on campus?"

"It says here James Redding was the youngest suicide in Pennsylvanian history. And his father, Charles Redding, was a professor. Creep!"

"Is there any possibility that, while we've been talking, you've been multitasking?"

Garcia huffed out a laugh. "What, and tracked down his current address?"

In unison, each of their phones pinged with a text.

"Oh, I love you, Penelope Garcia."

"Hey," Dallis mockingly glared, pointing a finger at Emily. "I loved her first."

"Please, girls, don't fight over me," Garcia cooed. "There's plenty of Penelope Garcia to go around."

Not wanting to waste any more time, Hotch started for the door. "Let's go."

The address lead them to a house several minutes away. Night had since fallen, leaving their blinding lights to wake the neighbours, who peered through open doors and windows, some even braving their front yards to watch police pour around the sides of the house to have it surrounded. Dallis, with her FBI vest in place and gun prepped, lead the way up the front steps where she found the front door unlocked. One after the other, agents and police combed the rooms, at first coming up with nothing. Peter Redding, from the looks of it, wasn't home.

"We need to move fast," Rossi said from where he watched Dallis' back as she scanned each door in the hallway. "There's meetings taking place all over the city."

"At least with your guys and ours, his chances are next to zero, right?" Baleman grumbled from the back of the group.

"He's gotten away with it this far."

Emily called Dallis' name from a few feet away, drawing her attention from the conversation. She gestured for Dallis to grab one handle of a set of double doors where yellow light filtered underneath. Slowly, she counted down on her fingers before they each swung a side open.

The room on the other side was much smaller than Dallis expected, leaving no possible place for somebody to be hiding in a last-ditch effort of evasion. There was just enough room for a desk and a large board with dozens of papers pinned on display. Carefully, Dallis snapped on a latex glove and pulled down a card with a name roughly scratched out in red pen.

Beth Smoler.

Still on the board next to the empty space was Curtis Fackler and several other names, some she didn't recognise and others she did.

"Guys," Emily called out, and several pairs of footsteps immediately approached before she could finish her sentence. "You may want to come take a look at this."

"He's crossed off the names of the last two victims," Dallis said, returning Beth's card so the whole scene could be photographed and recorded. "But look, there's ones that haven't been crossed out yet. Do you think there's a particular order here to who he's killing and when? Beth and Curtis' are in chronological order."

Baleman hesitated, struggling to take it all in. "I'm not sure, but look at all the support group cards. He's got times, dates, a list of names of all those in the meetings."

For weeks, months even, Peter Redding had obsessed over these people, planning every last move he made like he was playing one big game of chess. Move this pawn from here to here, sacrifice this pawn. Everything was right where he wanted it.

"They all have a type," Rossi frowned. "Alcoholic, narcotic, depression, divorce. This guy kept himself busy."

Dallis wondered what Peter planned to do if he got away with killing the parents of those fourteen children. If nobody picked up on the fact these weren't suicides, would he have decided it wasn't enough and moved on to everyone else in those groups? A man who had a taste of playing God. How could someone like him forget how euphoric it made him feel?

"Laurie Ann Morris," Emily murmured, pointing at the name following Curtis Fackler's. "We spoke to her and her husband. Her name's not crossed off like the others..."

"We need to get in contact with her right now," Dallis said. "He might already be with her."

They tried her work contact number and her personal line but no answer. Her husband had also already left work, but he picked up when Emily called his number.

"Jonathon, hello, this is Agent Emily Prentiss from the FBI," she said, struggling to not blurt out every word. "Is your wife Laurie Ann with you? Can you tell us where she is right now? Got it."

They didn't wait for her to hang up, scrambling into their SUV with Rossi and Emily in the front and Dallis and Baleman taking up residence in the back. From behind Emily's seat, Dallis could hear the faint mumble of Jonathan's voice on the other end of the line, demanding to know if something was going to happen to his wife. They'd already suffered one awful tragedy. Would he have to face another, this time on his own? Emily couldn't answer.

With her caught on another call, Dallis dialled Hotch.

"Cohen, what have you found?"

"To make it quick, Peter wasn't home but we did find what looks to me like his how-to guide for murder," she muttered, gripping the overhead handle as Rossi blared the sirens and swerved around cars too slow to react. "Can you all meet us at the address Emily sends you? We think he's with Laurie Ann Morris."

"Got it," Hotch didn't press her for proof, having enough trust in them to know they'd have their reasons.

When they pulled into the parking lot of the local community centre, the support group Laurie regularly attended had just ended, leaving a few confused civilians milling around outside as the reunited group of FBI agents frantically started another search. No matter who Dallis seemed to ask, nobody recognised Laurie or Peter. After several minutes, she returned to the main foyer where Reid and JJ had made progress with one concerned-looking woman hovering off to the side.

"Where's the main parking lot?"

"This way," Baleman pointed over his shoulder.

"How many exits does it have?" Hotch asked.

"Three. North, East and West side."

"Alright, let's split up and cover each one."

Hotch, Baleman and Morgan went one way, leaving Dallis with Rossi and Prentiss, then JJ with Reid.

"What kind of car does she have?" Dallis scanned the rows of parked vehicles, some with people inside and others void of life.

"A blue Chevy," answered Rossi from in front of her.

It was then that she saw it. She grabbed Emily's wrist, frantically pointing through the chain-link fence. Laurie's car was idling in the middle of the road right in front of the exit. She could just make out two shadows inside. One was in the driver's seat. Laurie. One was in the back, leaning over the console. Peter.

"There," she shouted, starting to run.

Emily pushed ahead of her. She'd met this woman as they were interviewing some of the other parents, warning them of what was happening. She'd seen her struggling to hold her other son, to wade through an endless ocean of pain keeping her from truly being a parent again. "Laurie Ann!"

All of a sudden, the blue Chevy roared to life. Two white headlights parted the darkness to reveal a shed at the other end of the aisle. With her foot flat on the accelerator, Laurie Ann hurtled forward. In the back, Peter flattened against the seat. Emily continued to scream, sprinting, but the sound was drowned out by the deafening bang of bending metal. The blue Chevy wrapped itself around the shed with smoke pluming from the destroyed engine. Laurie Ann's head resting on the horn left an endless ringing in Dallis' ears as the three of them hovered as close as they could get to the wreckage.

"Laurie Ann, can you hear me?" Emily called out, daring to move forward.

Dallis followed but pointed her gun at Peter through the shattered window. The others were alerted from the chaos, appearing all around them.

"Put your hands where we can see them!" Dallis demanded as Peter started to groan. "Morgan, go around. This door's busted."

"I don't understand what's going on," Peter tried to argue but he went ignored as Morgan grabbed his wrists. Once he was momentarily detained, Dallis lowered her weapon and rounded to the other side, pulling out her handcuffs and passing them to Morgan, who was unable to reach for his own.

"What's going on is you just took your last breath as a free man."

"I didn't do anything wrong -- ow! Let me go!"

Morgan threw him to the ground, roughly ordering him to shut up. Dallis turned her attention to the front seat as the first round of paramedics arrived to tend to Laurie Ann. She was awake and moving but she said nothing in response to Emily's comforting whispers. Still, Emily waited with her arm held through the window, careful not to prick herself on the shards of glass but wanting to hold Laurie Ann's hand in the aftermath.

That was the thing about death. It united humanity. Emily didn't know this woman's daughter, but her pain was like a knife to the gut.

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BY THE TIME THE team returned to the hotel they'd been staying in, it was the early hours of the morning. Peter had been taken into police custody where he would feel the brunt of Detective Baleman's wrath. Laurie Ann was given the go-ahead to return home with her husband and son. Emily was quiet as she retreated to her room. One by one, each person spilled out of the elevator until only Dallis, Rossi and Hotch were left.

"Get some sleep, guys," Hotch said when it was his turn. Sometimes, the team was lucky when they had to stay places overnight, and they ended up on the same floor of their chosen hotel. This wasn't one of those times, they were spread out everywhere, and Hotch was fortunate to have found a room after flying in so late. "We'll meet Baleman at the station in the morning before heading to the tarmac."

"Night, Aaron," Rossi squeezed his shoulder. Dallis had no doubt he was the only person Hotch had explained his absence to for their first day on the case. Both in their professional relationship and personal, David Rossi and Aaron Hotchner complimented each other.

It was just Dallis and Rossi now, who were fortunate to have rooms on the same floor. Granted, they were on other ends of the corridor, but Dallis always slept better when she knew she had someone familiar close by.

"How do you think Baleman's going to take it?" she asked as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out.

Subconsciously, she headed in the direction of her room, fishing through the pockets of the blazer she carried over her arm for the key card. Rossi fell into step beside her, as he had the night before when he insisted on walking her to her room first.

"Personally?" Rossi sighed. "He won't believe it."

When they were at Peter's house, Paul Baleman's name was nowhere to be found on any of his lists. Upon examination of the body, they also failed to find the signature prick of a needle in his hairline. It was unfortunate timing, but Detective Baleman's brother ended his life of his own accord, not because Peter did it for him.

"Maybe that's better," she said. "It might be the peace of mind he needs to keep going."

The truth would always be there, but it was up to Baleman if he let it in.

"Maybe," Rossi mumbled.

Dallis' gaze flickered to the side of his face, raking over the salt-and-pepper hair, the warm eyes, the familiar step of his feet in time with hers. "I don't know if I could do what Laurie Ann Morris did. Driving into that shed, knowing there's a chance I might never make it out of that car."

"Morgan's stubborn ass was right about one thing," he said, making Dallis laugh. "For some people, there's only one way out. Laurie Ann might not have been thinking about suicide before she met Peter Redding, but making that decision for herself instead of having it chosen for her was her way of taking control."

They stopped outside her hotel door and Dallis unlocked it, switching on the light and scanning the unmade bed and the clothes she'd left strewn across it. She groaned, resigning herself to cleaning everything up tonight so she could sleep in as much as possible in the morning.

"I'll leave you to it," Rossi chuckled. "Goodnight, Dallis."

"Goodnight, Dave."

As he had the night before, he waited until she closed the door, then Dallis heard his footsteps retreating. She stood there and listened to them fade into silence, then put the events of the night out of her mind.

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A/N: I totally wasn't foreshadowing anything at the end there... totally...