Dancing In The Morgue - Chapter 7

Little Fish

The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught.

- Tim Burton

"We recently found a case similar to the Bronson case, also here in New Jersey." Aaron Hotchner, also known as Hotch, announced. "A woman in her late thirties to early forties, also found dead on the floor of her house in West Long Branch."

"The body was stabbed multiples times post-mortem in the abdominal area and the murder weapon was an average kitchen knife found next to the victim's body, covered in fingerprints that were then identified as being her husband's." JJ continued, picking up where Hoth had stopped. "This woman's name was Martha Wisener, married to Zachary Wisener. He went missing a week ago, exactly when the woman's body was found." JJ looked at everyone in the room, all of her fellow agents, waiting for someone to say aloud what she was thinking.

"We're thinking these two cases are far from coincidence." David Rossi's voice pierced through the silence, stating the obvious.

"Maybe it's just a copy-cat, we've seen this before." Prentiss stated, not too convinced about the serial killer theory. "I mean, the Bronson case had a lot of impact on the media and whatnot, someone could just be copying it and make it look like a serial killer is on the loose."

"Yeah, but who would do this, five years later?" Morgan asked. He couldn't understand why someone would commit a crime exactly like one from five years earlier, on the exact same place, the exact same circumstances. However, the suspect from the first crime was dead and now they had nothing.

"I don't know..." Prentiss said, shrugging, an empty gaze upon her eyes. She hated not being able to figure something out.

"Focus, people!" Rossi said, trying to motivate his team. "In case this truly is the same murderer from five years ago, what do we know about him?"

"Well, so far there are only two victims, but both of them are female and both of them between the ages of thirty five to forty one years old." JJ said. "They both were married and owned homes in West Long Branch, New Jersey, not far from each other, actually..." JJ stopped herself in the middle of the sentence. She had figured something out.

"Spence!" she called out, looking at Reid, who had an empty gaze upon his eyes, perhaps emptier than Prentiss's. "You're the expert on Geographic profiling, what are the odds of these women knowing each other?"

"Well..." Reid started, faking more interest in the subject than he actually felt. Truth is, Emily Bronson was stuck inside his head and he couldn't properly focus on anything else. "West Long Branch has an estimate population of about eight thousand people, so it's a small town. It's also a kind of... hmmm... VIP place, with the general income of a family being eighty-one thousand dollars a year, which is about twenty thousand dollars above the average income for families in the state of New Jersey." He said all of that from a single breath, talking as fast as usual, leaving everyone slightly astonished by his knowledge on how many people there are in West Long Branch and how much money they make. Still, they weren't too surprised that he knew that stuff. After all, he was Spencer Reid, the boy genius who, according to Rossi, was left in a basket, on the steps of the FBI.

"So, that means these women probably knew each other...?" JJ asked, smiling to herself. She was smiling due to Reid's amazing ability to swallow pretty much any piece of information and trivia he would read. She found it cute, yet slightly disturbing.

"Yes, they probably knew each other." He said, curling up the corners of his mouth up, forming some sort of puzzling smile, that no one truly understood. "We should ask Garcia to cross both these women's names and find any connection between them... Like, public places they both had a membership on, such as gymnasiums, libraries, any exclusive clubs..."

"On it!" Morgan rushed to say as he picked up his phone.



Meanwhile, at the Morgue, Emily Bronson wasn't feeling so well. She was experiencing severe headaches, that almost kept her from opening her eyes. The bright lights only made it worse. Also, she felt sick to her stomach, like she wanted to throw up desperately. She considered that maybe the smell of the Morgue was giving her nausea, but it had never happened before in almost three years, since she first started working there. She assumed maybe her breakfast had not been properly digested due to the stressful situation with Nana Beth that morning. Being nervous is not good for your digestion, so she thought maybe it was due to those events that she was feeling sick. Or maybe some sort of virus she picked up somewhere, those things are everywhere nowadays.

Nonetheless, she didn't have much time to put into thoughts like those, she had to focus on work.

But how could she focus on work when there was so much going on around her?

Her mother's case had reappeared for some reason, and so did the memories of her father and a chance he might not be dead. Some FBI agent suddenly walked into her life, with no previous warning, leaving her puzzled, breathless, disarmed and, most of all, naked. Metaphorically naked.

Being an FBI profiler, earning a badge with Behavioral Analysis Unitimprinted on it, she felt like she was completely nude around him. He had looked her in the eyes and she wondered what cold deep dark secrets he had found just based on that look. Also, she had feelings towards him.

She had often wished life had turned her into a psychopath, someone unable to feel any sort of guilt or remorse whatsoever. But it didn't. It just turned her into a scared confused little fish, who shape-shifts in order to scare away potential predators. Truth is, she was still damaged on the inside, no doubt about that.

But Reid messed with her in a very particular way.

---

To my Angel.