❝ are you working on getting the fourth mrs. david rossi? ❞

RIDING THE JET to South Carolina for what seemed like a cold case was the BAU. A couple recently found a bunch of mummified bodies that were hidden in the walls and floor of their starter home. Rossi, being the closest one to South Carolina because of his time off, checked it out and suggested that the team should, too. "So, as far as anyone knows, Karl and Dorothy Elgin lived totally isolated. No kids, no family, no friends." JJ read from the information on her tablet.

"50 years. I mean, they had to have some interaction with other people." Luke thought. Emily got off the phone with Rossi and turned to face the team, "5 bodies and counting, all young females. Coroner says the victims have been there for a while."

         "Are we looking at a husband and wife killing team here? It's rare, but it does happen." Olivia questioned. "In England, Rosemary West assisted her husband, Fred, in the murder of 12 individuals over a 20-year span without detection." Spencer informed.

         "Dorothy Elgin could be a homegrown version of that — female accommodating the psychopathic urges of the man." Emily stated. "Okay, but why mummify? Forensic countermeasure maybe?" JJ wondered. "Throwing the bodies in a swamp would have been a better forensic countermeasure." Luke counterclaimed.

         Tara agreed, "Luke's right. It was a deliberate choice to preserve those corpses, keep the victims close to home." Spencer suggested, "Maybe the killer thought he was sending the bodies into the future. Ancient Egyptians believed the souls of the deceased would return from the afterlife to re-inhabit their original bodies, so the human form was kept in tact and recognizable."

         "There's also a literal covering up of the crime here, and that says remorse." Matt commented. Emily started giving out tasks, "Matt, JJ, go to the local Sheriff's Department, help then prepare for the media frenzy that's coming down the pike. Luke, Liv, you two and I will meet Rossi at the crime scene. Reid, Tara, go to the nursing home, see if you can talk to Dorothy Elgin. If anyone knows the secrets of that house, it's her."

         When the three agents found the home the mummies were found, the first thing they noticed was those decayed bodies being carried by examiners and the crime scene unit. Despite the findings of numerous old, decaying bodies, there wasn't a particular smell that one would expect to engulf the place when they walked in. "How many victims are we up to?" Emily asked.

"7, in the walls and under the floor. They found this box filled with knickknacks next to one of the bodies." Rossi told. "Souvenirs of their victims." Luke remarked. "We should get descriptions of these items out to the public. It might jog someone's memory." Emily suggested.

"Dr. Caldwell, this is SSA Prentiss, SSA Alvez, and SSA Griffins." Rossi introduced. He then looked back at the profilers, "Dr. Caldwell's with the Charleston coroner's office. She came up to help us out."

She nodded, "Yeah, local ME's not equipped to handle something like this, so I'm having the remains taken back to our facilities." Emily asked her, "Do we know how long the bodies have been here?" She answered, "Ballpark, 20 years. Some longer, some shorter."

"This all seems fairly sophisticated." Olivia remarked. "It is. The internal organs weren't removed as with a true mummification, but the bodies were treated before being wrapped and then salted. That's why there's no discernible odor." Dr. Caldwell nodded.

         Luke glanced at one of the bodies in the floor and studied it, "Those look like the teeth of a meth addict." Emily guessed, "These women probably all lived high-risk lifestyles — drug addicts, prostitutes, runaways." Rossi assumed, "Explains why they might vanish for decades and nobody knows of cares."

         Dr. Caldwell disagreed with Rossi, "Somebody cared. The victims' clothes were mended, carefully sewn, and kept in good repair." She handed the evidence bag to them. Then, one of her coworkers called her to come outside and the profilers followed.

         In a wooden box, two more bodies were discovered. Dr. Caldwell stepped in to examine them as Emily noticed, "These victims don't look as old." Caldwell confirmed, "They aren't. They've been dead less than a year."

         "Meaning after Karl died and Dorothy became invalid. Someone has been continuing what they may have started." Olivia noted. Rossi stated, "We've got an active unsub."

         The four of them went to the Sheriff's Department as Matt and JJ went to the coroner's office and Reid and Tara were still at the nursing home. They set up the board they'd use to store their information in and they glared at it, trying to figure out more. "Our unsub has to be someone close to the Elgin's. He was familiar with the earlier killings and tried to emulate them." Olivia said.

         Luke guessed, "A friend, maybe, or a family member we don't know about."

         "Okay, let's take a step back and review what we've got so far. Karl Elgin began killing young runaway types starting back in the 80s. Brought them back to the house using some sort of ruse, a hot meal, roof over their head." Emily began. "So many victims over such a long time span, Dorothy had to be complicit." Luke suggested.

Rossi spoke up, "More than that, maybe. She could have been calling the shots, reining in the more violent tendencies of her husband." Emily continued, "Now fast forward to present day, and years after Karl's last victim, two more women are killed in the span of 12 months."

"Murders that coincidentally started after Karl died." Olivia stated. Emily pulled out her phone and called Penelope, "Garcia?"

"Dígame."

"Have you found any connection between the two women we just ID'd?" She asked. Penelope replied, "No, I have not. Both were married and had children, participated in their communities. They both seem like model citizens."

"Two women like that go missing in less than a year and nobody down here connects the dots?" Rossi questioned. It was definitely strange. Whenever a well respected person with family and friends goes missing, certainly at least one person would report them missing. Somehow, no one there did for either two of those women.

Back at the nursing home with Tara and Reid, Dorothy Elgin stabbed herself with a fork and she unfortunately died in the ambulance. It was after she unknowingly screamed, "It won't work. It's not the same." The two profilers thought that she knew something that would rat out the person she's trying to protect. Rummaging through her room, they found a bundle of envelopes, which was brought back to the precinct. Then, Emily and Reid were able to find out Dorothy Elgin gave birth at one point in her life, giving them reason to believe that Dorothy and Karl have a son who may be their current unsub.

While working on the case, another woman named Mary Brewer was just reported missing. Forensics finished examining the envelopes and sent it back to the BAU at the precinct, where they read the letters. "Words from the grave. Our unsub's identity could be hidden in here." Matt stated.

Rossi sighed, "Let's do it."

Olivia picked up the first letter and began reading, "Dear mom and dad, it's me Delta. Getting this letter, you must be shocked. I don't think I ever wrote anything to you before. I'm staying with a nice older couple I met when I was hitchhiking. We play cards and things. I'm getting healthy. There's a pond where Karl's teaching me how to fish. He's so nice. Karl is Dorothy's husband." JJ picked up a different letter and read aloud, "Don't worry because they treat me just like I was their own daughter. I'll be coming home next week. Honest."

They picked up and read more letters only to realize that each of them basically had the same messages. JJ sighed, "The common refrain is 'They treated me like I was their own daughter'."

"Maybe that's what the abductions were all about. Karl and Dorothy, they had a son, maybe they wanted to add a daughter." Matt pondered. "Building a family?" Rossi questioned.

Afterwards, the team delivered the profile to the police and local public. Their main focus of their profile was the attention of Mary Brewer and Karl and Dorothy Elgin's child. However, a woman named Leeanne came into the precinct informing Emily that they didn't have a son, and instead they had a daughter. And it was her. She explained to Matt and Emily everything they wanted to know. Like how she would run away from time to time, for instance. She insisted it wasn't them who committed the crimes, but they knew their profile was correct. Karl and Dorothy definitely murdered those women.

Sitting around the table in the room they occupied for the case, Luke said, "So, it wasn't about creating a daughter. They were trying to replace the daughter they'd lost." Olivia pointed out, "You know, Leeanne's 5'7, brunette, small boned." She was comparable to previous victims of the Elgin couple, the two recent ones, and Mary Brewer.

"Yeah, but there's something still not sitting right." Rossi voiced, "A 16-year-old girl one day walks away from the only world she's ever known, no money, no resources, nothing. There's more to this than run-of-the-mill teenage angst."

"Yeah, something triggered her decision." Olivia agreed. Rossi then called Garcia on his phone, "Penelope."

"David." She responded.

"Leeanne Garrity ran away from home in either the spring or summer of 1988. Did anything unusual happen in the area back then?" He asked.

"I am a firm believer that the unusual lies in the brain of the beholder. Having said that, the majority of brains would say that this qualifies. June 5, 1988, local farmer named Roger Milburn killed his wife and his teenage son before taking his own life. It was huge local news at the time." Penelope told before Rossi thanked her and hung up the call.

"Leeanne must have heard about that. If she was in denial about her parents' homicidal tendencies, that would have been one hell of a wakeup call." Luke thought. "Yeah, she could have feared the same thing happened to her." Olivia added. Rossi asked, "Liv, can you and the boy genius take a look at whatever they may have on file about that old case?" To which she nodded in response.

She called Reid as they occupied a different room in the precinct to go over the files from the Roger Milburn case. "Okay, so this is everything collected from the Milburn crime scene?" Olivia questioned and the sheriff nodded. Reid looked at a few photos from the files and called out, "Liv, look at this."

She looked over his shoulder to see the Milburn family with gunshot wounds on their upper back. "Yeah, that doesn't track." She muttered. The sheriff approached them, "What doesn't?" Spencer answered, "Bullet trajectories, body angles, and blood spatter aren't consistent with a murder-suicide."

"Were Roger Milburn's hands ever tested for gun powder residue?" Olivia asked. "No, ma'am. It seemed like an open-and-shut case back then." The sheriff told.

"This crime scene was staged. Someone else killed this family." Spencer concluded. Olivia began going through more boxes filled with belongings and bagged evidence from the Milburn case as Spencer grabbed more files and went through them. "It was just a mother, father, and teenage son living at the Milburn house, correct? No one else." Liv questioned the sheriff. "That's right." He replied. She then pulled out a bottle from from a large, orange envelope, "Then, what were they doing with a baby bottle?"

"Where did the Milburns live?" Spencer asked. The sheriff responded by slightly unfolding a nearby map and placing it in front of him as he pointed to the location, "Right there." The Milburn residence was right next to the Elgin property.

Luke and Tara went to go talk to Leeanne where they brought the baby bottle with them. The baby was Leeanne and Steve Milburn's child. Dorothy and Karl knew she was pregnant and she even had the baby at the house. The couple insisted on taking care of the baby, but it only made them go crazy. So, one night Leeanne took her son, ran away, and dropped her son off at Steve's, leaving them behind since the Milburn's didn't want anything to be related to the Elgin's. And there, Leeanne's son was partially raised by the Milburn's.

That was until Karl Elgin murdered the Milburn's and took the son, where he raised him. Dorothy became depressed due to Leeanne's departure from the family which was why Karl abducted and mummified those women — so they would have a new Leeanne, one that wouldn't leave. It didn't make much difference, but then Karl passed away, leaving Leeanne's son and Dorothy where the son grew up to continue Karl's murders.

Garcia was able to find where the son held Mary Brewer due to Leeanne telling Emily and JJ about the pond Karl took her to when she was little. The same pond where Karl took the women fishing. Rossi and Matt were the closest ones there, so the two were the ones who found Mary and arrested Leeanne's son. They found out that the son practically forced his victims to give him maternal care. The kind of care he never got to receive as he grew up.

The team started packing up from the case at the precinct. They were packing up their belongings, case files, etc. There, the sheriff asked them, "So, all this is because the Elgins' daughter ran off?"

Tara responded, "Karl saw the effect it had on his wife, so he went out, found those girls in an attempt to pull Dorothy out of her tailspin." JJ added, "He surrounded her with substitute Leeannes. In the wall, under the floor, basically encircling her." Matt followed, "And their grandson tried to do the same thing for her once Karl died."

The sheriff stared at the team, being baffled by the external nonchalance of their behavior after such a strange case. "Is this a normal case for you folks?"

Rossi shook his head, "None of them are normal." His cellphone then began to ring and he walked to the coroner of the room to take it. The sheriff began speaking to Spencer, "Well, Dr. Reid, I can say it was a pleasure talking to you. I'm gonna give that tree in the forest thing some more thought."

"Don't give it too much thought. It's basically an infallible conjecture." He pressed his lips together after. The sheriff nodded, not really understanding what he said, so he just smiled and nodded before thanking the team and walking out the room.

Rossi asked Emily, "Uh, Emily, I need to go to New York for a couple of days. Would that be all right?" She teased, "Oh, after the wrench I threw in your vacation with my quick detour, take all the time you want."

With that, the team started walking out the room to head to the parking lot and drive back to their motel rooms. JJ stayed behind for a few minutes to give one of the victims' relatives some closure. Spencer and Olivia ended up walking together with each step they took being in unison with the other's. He told her the context about the conversation he had with the sheriff, ". . . And then he seemed confused about it, so I explained to him that it was just a metaphysical riddle about unperceived existence. Which, you know, the answer's largely dependent on whether you subscribe to substance or bundle theory. What I assume Emily was saying was that the tree does make a sound. Get it?"

Olivia nodded and hummed understandingly in response as she grinned at him. She genuinely loves hearing Spencer explain to her about practically anything. She looked to the other side of her, where Rossi caught up with the two of them. "Oh, hey, Rossi, I've been meaning to ask how your vacation in Georgia went."

"It went really well." He lightly chuckled. Spencer and Olivia both glanced at each other with knowing looks and suppressed smiles. Usually, when someone asked Rossi how his vacation was, they would get the same answer: Great. Then, he'd probably share minor details or briefly describe the place he went to, but that wasn't the case this time. Rossi noticed the looks Olivia and Spencer have been sending each other. "Oh, no, stop what the two of you are doing. Do not profile me."

The two of them discarded his wishes and did the complete opposite. "You know, I actually noticed earlier that the sent of your cologne changed. You used to radiate that musk-y smell when we last saw you, but now you kinda smell just a little flowery." Spencer realized. Olivia gasped and looked at Rossi, "Are you working on getting the fourth Mrs. David Rossi?" She asked, teasingly smiling at him.

He held his hand up, "I'll have you know that she'd technically wouldn't be the fourth one if we were to get married." Once again, Olivia and Spencer looked at each other, then back at him. "Does that mean you're seeing one of your ex-wives?" Spencer asked after thinking about it for a few seconds. Rossi didn't say anything back and instead tried to refrain a smile from the slightest mention of Krystall.

They took his silence as a yes. Olivia let out a breathy chuckle, "You do know there's a reason your marriages never work out, right?" By now, the three of them were already in the parking lot. The night sky was enveloped with stars, the shining half moon being the only thing above them that was different than the rest. Rossi stopped walking and pointed his finger to Olivia as she stopped as well, "You don't get to speak about my marriages until I see Elijah get on one knee, popping the question to you."

Spencer kept walking as he could feel the smile on his face gradually transition to more of a frown, or revert to a stoic expression. The mention of Elijah's name reminded him that he was Olivia's boyfriend. Hearing Rossi talk about Elijah and Olivia in the same sentence as getting down on one knee and proposing somehow felt worse than the healing bruises on his face from the Believers. He could hear Olivia's rebuttal to Rossi in the distance as he got closer to his car.

         "Rossi, please, it's been six months. But isn't Krystall the one you married the night you met and then later divorced just barely 24 hours later?" Spencer heard her say.

         When he did reach his car, he sat in the driver's seat for a moment, his hands gripped onto the steering wheel as he started thinking about nothing, but Olivia. He was again confused by his feelings. He couldn't tell if it was just because he felt weird since he and Olivia used to date and now they're just friends, or if there was a possibility that his feelings for Olivia were like a fire; it consumed all of him with a single spark. But to make matters even more confusing, he received a text from Oliver, which stated he and Rosie went to the mall earlier, and a photo attachment was also sent. It was of two different sweater vests that were laid out on the couch. Oliver sent another text that read: it looks like something you'd wear so we both got one lol. we're gonna be you for halloween this year.

         The sentiment and thought of the text surely made Spencer's heart jump with joy. He thought it was adorable. The twins would now be the second and third people to dress up as him from halloween — Henry, being the first one to do so a few year ago when he was 3. The twins absolutely love Spencer. Keeping in touch with the twins gave Spencer a reason to still be able to be so close to Olivia. He feared that if anything changed, he would have to step away. Which Spencer then thought was preposterous since he didn't think Elijah would ever tell him to step away from Liv and the twins just from the one time they met.

Oliver's text made Spencer even more confused because for a second, he forgot he wasn't the twins' paternal figure. Elijah was now. But they were the closest chance he's had at fulfilling his wishes of becoming a dad. For years now, he's been wondering what it would be like if he had children of his own and how happy he would be. He really only got close to that dream with the twins. Spencer practically helped Olivia raise the twins after Anna's death. But ever since they broke up, he just hasn't spent that much time with them as he used to. He's been gradually getting there, but he figures the real paternal figure in the twins' life should be Elijah. Not him.

         Certainly, Spencer had to be mostly confused by his feelings because of his history with Olivia. That should be the only reason. Many years have passed since their breakup and being friends with your ex can confuse people. He convinced himself that that was totally understandable. Spencer and Olivia are only friends. And that was that.

ANGIE'S NOTES ☺︎︎
we all know good and well that i'm lying and
spencer is lying to himself🤨‼️
anyway, next few chapters up to the end of
season 14 is gonna be a ride😁
buckle up, my loves 😇