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CHAPTER THREE:
the reaper.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The team has dispersed from the round table and had headed back to their spots in the department. JJ, as the communications liaison, she had her own office, as did Hotch and Rossi. Meanwhile, the rest of them were spread out on the floor of the office area. Lizzie had spent her morning getting set up at her desk—logging into the computer she had been given, putting pens and notepads on her desk. With more things spread out on the desk, it looked more lived in; like it wasn't her first day. Though, of course, over time, the mess of her table would only grow.

Lizzie had spoken with Emily who sat in the cubicle over from her. She had been complaining about filling in paperwork from previous cases and Lizzie had nodded her head in understanding, telling her she hated paperwork just as much as she did. Through this, Lizzie found out she and Emily were pretty alike that way. They preferred being out in the field, not stuck behind a desk filing paperwork all day and that was why Emily had joined the BAU in the first place. And Lizzie was itching for her first case to come in so she could get out there.

"That was your team, huh?" Emily was saying as Lizzie finished sharing a story from back in Boston. She and her team of fellow FBI agents had tracked down a serial killer who's signature was cutting off peoples noses to spite their face, in the literal and metaphorical terms. In the media, he'd been names the Nose Killer which Lizzie always found ridiculous—like, who was coming up with these names? He had exactly thirteen victims when Lizzie and her team caught him before he could take the fourteenth, saving the life of the twenty-one-year-old he had captured and locked in a storage container. He had caused absolute hell for Michigan but after years, he had finally been caught at the hands of the FBI. It was a well-known case at the FBU because of the strange signature of the kills.

Lizzie nodded, sipping on her coffee, "Yeah. He was a arrogant bastard too—thought he was so smart with the whole taking a metaphor literally thing. But he was an idiot and that's why he got caught." She said, giving a shrug. But she knew it was more than that, he hadn't just been caught because he was a man with a low IQ. He had been caught because her team had been vigilante and their profile had brought him to justice and it gave her a lot of pride.

Emily booped her head, impressed, "It seems like your team worked really well together. So, why the transfer?" At the question, Spencer even glanced up from his desk in curiosity, his brows knitted together. Lizzie looked up at the older woman's query. It was obvious that Emily wasn't the nosy type—but she likes to know who the people she surrounded herself with were like. And she wanted to know why if things had been seemingly so good back in Boston, why Lizzie would request a transfer to begin with. It wasn't like she was hoping there would be skeletons in the young woman's closet, she just wanted to understand her a little better.

Lizzie settled her mug down, "Jack's getting older," She began saying, "I don't want him thinking I'm not gonna be around when I could be, Y'know? Boston was a big part of my life, it's where I grew up. It's where—" She paused, diverting her gaze as Emily stared at her, a knowing look in her eyes. Lizzie sighed and looked back up at her, "I guess I just had to move on. There was nothing for me in Boston." She confessed, shrugging her shoulders to her ears. It was a hard thing to admit but it was the truth. Boston was no longer a part of her that she needed.

Suddenly her father was zooming by their desks, his brief case in hand and a hard look on his face, "Wheels up in fifteen," He paused for a brief moment, glancing back to make eye contact with his daughter, "We're going to Boston." Lizzie's jaw went loose as she exchanged a look with Emily who was staring back at her. Sometimes, words had a really good way of throwing themselves back at you.

Morgan appeared by the desk, watching Hotch march off in confusion, aware of the sudden change in his demeanour. JJ then appeared next, tucking blonde hair behind her ears, "I guess we're going to Boston." She announced to them, throwing her hands up.

Lizzie pouted her lips, "I didn't even pack an overnight bag." She thought aloud, staring off after her father, trying to say something—anything except for what she was thinking which went along the lines of 'shit, shit, shit'.

JJ put a hand on her shoulder, "We're about the same size, you can share mine. I always overpack, anyways." She said, giving her shoulder a squeeze, being more than friendly towards the girl who was a few years younger than her.

Rossi walked up beside them, his hands tucked away in the pockets of his dress trousers, "So, Boston, huh?" He said, overhearing Hotch from his office before he had come out to join them. His gaze was solely on Lizzie and she could feel it burning into the side of her head as she tried not to look at him.

Elizabeth licked her lips, staring after where her father had went, "Looks like it."

On the jet—which Boston's Bureau definitely didn't have, Hotch began unravelling why their trip to Boston was so sudden. The Boston Reaper was back. Lizzie's eyes had widened in shock at the words leaving her fathers lips. The Reaper had been dormant for years and had become a ghost story kids would tell around campfires. Lizzie herself had thought he was long gone, perhaps even dead after he just stopped killing one day. But Hotch had informed them that the only reason he had disappeared was because he had made a deal with the Sherif at the time. If he stopped hunting him, he'd stop the killing. And he had. But now Shaunessy was dead and that put sn end to the deal they'd kept secret all those years. The Reaper had reigned terror over the city of Boston all those years ago—and now he was back.

"The Reaper is driven by a need to dominate, control and manipulate." Hotch was saying from where he stood in front of the team, pacing back and forth with a file in his hands as many other files laid spread out in front of the team; on their laps, in their hands, on the tables in font of them.

"So then, why would he offer a deal that would stop him from doing that?" Emily questioned, gesturing with the file she had between her fingertips, glancing up at Hotch for the answers.

"Well, killing gave him power but after so many, the payoff began to diminish. So he decided to switch tactics." Hotch began telling the team, having their full attention as he spoke.

Lizzie nodded her head along with him, knowing where her father was going with it, "So, the deal gave him power—more power than the killings." She finished, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. She had a cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of her and a case file of the murders sprawled out on her legs that she had crossed.

Hotch looked down at Lizzie, giving her a praising nod, "Yes. He manipulated the police into voluntarily surrendering." He agreed with her. Lizzie couldn't begin to imagine the stir such a thing would cause if it ever got out—that the Boston police had made a deal with a serial killer that now put more people in danger, only a decade later.

"He even got it in writing." Spencer spoke up from where he sat opposite Lizzie, his own files placed down on the table in front of them. He had previously told Lizzie to be careful with her cup of coffee in case she spilled any of it over the files. Lizzie had retorted that she wasn't five. And then tried to cover up the fact that she had already spilled some on the hem of her white shirt which had earned an unimpressed stare on Spencer's behalf.

               "He won. So why start killing again?" JJ wondered, her cropped blonde hair framing her face, light from the window streaming in onto her pale skin.

               "Well, because the only person that knew he'd won, the person he made the deal with, just died." Morgan theorised from where he sat beside JJ, making her nod along with him as they put the pieces together as a team.

              Rossi inhaled sharply, "Narcissistic killers need other people to recognise their power. That's why they contact the media." He added, sitting further back from the rest of the team, closer to Hotch who continued to pace the carpeted floor. It was obvious this case was getting to him and Lizzie could understand why. He himself had been on the case all those years ago—and the FBI had been dismissed. If they hadn't, maybe they could have caught him before any of this could have happened.

             "So, how did he stop for ten years?" Emily asked, a sigh in her voice as Lizzie furrowed her brows, thinking it over.

              "In Night of the Reaper, the author suggests he had been arrested for an unrelated crime or died. Perhaps he's trying to correct that misconception." Spencer said, fiddling with the pages of the book he was referencing that sat in front of him. Lizzie had watched him read the entire thing—twice, within their time on the jet, which hadn't been long.

             "It's the only thing that makes sense," Elizabeth began saying, sitting up a little straighter, "If he wasn't dead or arrested, the only thing that would've kept him from killing would've been the deal that was made. And now that the person he made it with is dead—he can resume where he left off, prove all the theorisers wrong." She assumed, giving a light shrug, settling down the hoard of papers sprawled on her legs onto the table, momentarily mixing them up with Spencer's who made an immediate effort to sort them out.

              "So, what has he been doing all this time?" JJ questioned.

             "Planning what he would do if he started killing again." Hotch filled in the blanks for her.

             Lizzie inhaled a sharp breath, pulling one of her legs up to her chest, hugging it with both arms, "And he's had ten years to do so." She reminded them, putting it out there that whatever he could be planning next could potentially be the worse they had seen from him yet. He'd had over a decade to think about killing and what he had planned could be horrific.

            "So, from '95 to '98, he shoots, stabs and bludgeons twenty-one victims," Morgan began saying, shuffling through the crime scene photographs that were bloody and gruesome, "Men. Women. All ages, all types. No specific victimology or MO. How did you build a profile from that?" He asked, furrowing his thick-dark brows as he looked up at Hotch for answers.

             "We didn't. Shaunessy sent us home before we had a chance," A silence washed over the group as they realised they would now have to build a profile from scratch about a serial killer that had been dormant for ten years. Elizabeth tucked a stand of loose blonde hair behind her ear and looked up at her father, "BTK, the Zodiac and the Reaper all have similarities—"

              Lizzie scoffed, "Yeah, they're all douchebags." She said under her breath, but both Morgan and Emily overheard her and let out small scoffs, agreeing with her statement.

             "They are all highly intelligent, disciplined, sadistic killers who named themselves in the press." Hotch finished, sending his daughter a sideways glance who pretended not to notice it and picked up a random file, scanning over it briefly to appear busy. Lizzie had a habit of speaking without thinking.

             "Highly intelligent may be a bit of an understatement," Spencer began correcting him, "The Reaper and the Zodiac killer have never been arrested and the BTK killer was only caught after twenty-five years because he went to the press to counter a book that said he'd died, moved away or been locked up. Just like this one." Lizzie diverted her gaze at Spencer's words. One of her hands found the skin on her forearm from underneath her shirt and she began scratching back and forth on the skin slightly. The man that had murdered her family had never been caught either and it still made her feel sick to her stomach after all those years—but she'd never want to admit that it bothered her. At least, never to anyone she worked with. She didn't want anyone thinking she was incapable of doing her job.

            "Speaking of the media, when this gets out, it's going to be a frenzy," JJ started to point out with a scoff, "If they get wind of this, they're going to be all over the Boston police." She gestured with the evidence bag in her hands, showing the sheet of paper that the Reaper had wrote to Shaunessy—it was the deal that had stopped him from killing all those years with his symbol on it.

             Lizzie gnawed on her bottom lip. The Boston police had been unlucky when it came to their two most prolific serial killers in the last decade. There was the Boston Reaper—and, of course, the man that had killed Lizzie's family along with six others who had never been named in the press. They had both never been found and Lizzie could only imagine the stress the police department was under knowing that one of them had resurfaced. Though, a small part of Lizzie was relieved it was the Reaper. She liked to live her life believing that her families killer had been arrested on different charges or had died. She didn't like the idea of living in the same world as him or knowing that he was still out there; potentially hurting people the way he had hurt her.

             "The longer we can float the copycat story, the better chance we'll have at catching him," Hotch insisted, "Rossi, Prentiss and Morgan, go to the field office, set up shop, go through everything there. Liz, JJ and Reid, we'll go to the crime scene." Lizzie nodded her head at her fathers orders and sent a small smile in both JJ and Spencer's directions.

        Once they were off the jet, the team split up into the two groups Hotch had chosen and went in different vehicles. Lizzie had some small talk with JJ in the backseat, getting to know her a little more. Lizzie found out that JJ was incredibly excited to be having a child, along with her long-term boyfriend who was a detective from New Orleans. JJ insisted that Will had the most drop-dead gorgeous accent that had made her fall in love with him and Lizzie had chuckled, telling her she'd have to head it some time. After all, women loved a man with an accent.

            However, their small chat came to an end when they pulled up at the crime scene. JJ made an instant beeline towards the reporters scattered throughout. Lizzie talked it out with those on the scene. Lizzie was met with a familiar face and she stuck her hand out to shake Sergeant O'Mara's hand, "Agent Hotchner, if it wasn't for the circumstances I'd be happy to see you." He said, taking her hand in hers as she gave it a firm shake.

             Lizzie smiled at him, "You too, Sergeant," She replied politely. She was familiar with the Sergeant as their paths had crossed on a few cases she had worked in her hometown. She gestured to Spencer and her father, "And I'm sure youll remember my father. And this is Dr. Reid." She introduced them, stepping out of the way so that the man could shake her fathers hand. Spencer simply offered a smile and a wave—something Lizzie picked up on. It seemed that Spencer Reid wasn't a fan of physical touch. Lizzie was the total opposite.

              O'Mara shook her fathers hand and then lifted the crime scene tape, allowing them to duck underneath, "Sorry I haven't called you back. As you can see, I've been busy." He said, gesturing his hand to the reporters and news crews that were scattered throughout the area. How voice was strained, showing how the return of the Reaper was giving him stress.

              "They're like vultures circling the dead." Lizzie commented in disgust, shaking her head at them.

            "You know," Spencer began saying, already gesturing with his hands from beside her and she turned her head to look up at his ridiculously tall frame, "It's actually been proven to be a myth that vultures circle dying prey. There's actually never been anything proven that they can sense when an animal is dying. They actually only circle around the animals to see if it's safe before they drop down to eat." Lizzie stared up at Spencer's sudden and random fact, her lips parted. Well, you learn something knew every day, she thought to herself as she wondered if there was anything Spencer Reid didn't know.

             "You'll get used to that." Hotch said in her ear as they followed O'Mara away from the overbearing stares of reporters and news crews and Lizzie smiled. She actually found Spencer's ramblings pretty charming.

               Stopping closer to the crime scene, Hotch turned to the Sergeant, "It's not a copycat, Mike. I wish it were, but it isn't." He said now that they were far away enough that eavesdroppers couldn't hear but their eager eyes didn't look away from them once.

             "Yeah, no offence, you don't know that and I didn't invite you in." O'Mara said, turning standoffish towards them. Elizabeth had seen it happen a few times before when cases would drop in Boston and they would cross paths. He didn't like anyone treading on his toes, especially the FBI; like a lot of cops.

            "Shaunessy did," Hotch said before reaching into his suit pocket to pull out the evidence bag holding the letter the Reaper had sent, marked by him, allowing O'Mara to have a look at it. O'Mara's face dropped and he shared a glance with Lizzie who nodded, "Want to invite us in?" After a moment, realising that they weren't dealing with a copycat, O'Mara nodded his head in defeat as he realised he would need them more then he had previously thought.

             "What was he thinking? This could destroy the department." O'Mara said in horror as JJ approached them, catching up to the crime scene after shooting down questions from the reporters.

              "We know." Lizzie said, a sympathetic tone to her voice as JJ reached them.

             "This is SSA Jennifer Jareau—Sergeant Mike O'Mara." Hotch quickly introduced them.

             JJ tucked flyaway strands of hair behind her ear, "We're setting up at the field office." JJ let the Sergeant know.

              "Okay. I'm done here, give them anything they want." O'Mara called out to the police and crime scene units, handing Hotch back the evidence bag, handing the case over to them.

            Lizzie offered him a thankful smile, "Thanks, Sergeant." The man returned the smile, but it was barley on his face for a second before he turned and walked away, JJ following after him to speak with him further. Sergeant O'Mara was a hard-ass but that was only because he cared for the civilians of his city and he felt powerless in cases like this.

             From beside Lizzie, Spencer opened up a file, "Nina Hale, nineteen and Evan Harvey, twenty-three," He read aloud as they began walking closer to where the crime scene unit were marking up and taking photographs, "Nina's throat was slashed. She was stabbed forty-six times. Evan was bludgeoned and then shot. No shell casings were found." He continued as they stopped outside of the car the victims had been killed inside and outside of with the Reapers mark spray painted on the side.

              "He preferred revolvers. 44 Magnum. The younger the female, the more time he spends with them, usually with a knife." Hotch said, walking around the side of the car to where Nina Hale was murdered inside of the car.

             Lizzie glanced at the file Spencer was holding, getting close enough to smell his aftershave—he smelled like old paper and wood, "Hey, let me see that," She said and Spencer handed her the file, allowing her to look it over. Her eyes scanned the page before holding it up and pointing at an image of Nina's wrist, "She must have wore something around her wrist, there's tan-lines. I'm assuming a watch." She said, glancing across at her father.

              A look of realisation crossed his face as he glanced across at a man from the crime scene unit, "Do we have his wallet?" The man nodded. Hotch looked across at Lizzie and Spencer, "The Reaper took items from each victim and placed them on the next so as to make sure we knew it was him." He informed them, though, they already knew that information. They had read it in the files.

              Hotch looked back down at the crime scene photos, "No corrective lens requirements." Hotch said, taking in the picture of Evan Harvey who's face was soaked with blood with his eyes wide open and glasses over them.

            "The glasses aren't his?" Spencer questioned.

             "He only took glasses from one victim, the ninth. We should have found them on the tenth and we didn't—they were never found." Hotch said, making Lizzie furrow her brows.

            "Then there's something special abou the ninth victim." She realised. The Reaper wouldn't have chose to leave an item of his now unless there was.

            Hotch looked across at his daughter, "He survived." Lizzie and Spencer shared a knowing look. Going by victimology, if the Reaper had now chose to leave the ninth victims item with his newest victims then there was something special about him—something he's was trying to tell them; or taunt them. And it gave them their newest lead.

( authors note )

              hey, guys! i can't even begin to describe how much I loved the foyet storyline and with lizzie's backstory, it just fit so much for this to be her first case with the team! hope you all enjoyed this chapter :) let me know your thoughts!

               — taylor xx