Criminal Minds: Killer Profile
Chapter OneJuly 28Quantico, VirginiaFor local detectives, one or more of four murder  motives figure in ninety-nine percent of the homicides  they encounter. These motives are, in no particular  order, love, money, sex, and drugs.No matter the circumstance, no matter how far  afield the killers’ motives seem to be, the four basics  almost always pertain: love, money, sex, or drugs.  Love and sex, of course, have considerable overlap,  but then so do money and drugs.And when a crime comes up where the motive  doesn’t clearly fall into those categories, that special  one percent of murders that the local police cannot  solve on their own, the best option remaining, in the  minds of many in local law enforcement, is to bring  such cases to the attention of the Behavioral Analysis  Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Just south of Washington, D.C., across the Potomac  River from Maryland, the U.S. Marine Corps base at  Quantico, Virginia, serves as home to dozens of Marine  Corps schools, the DEA training academy, and  the FBI Training and Development Division. Also  nestled within the nearly four hundred acres of  woods, surrounding what its inhabitants sometimes  call the Facility, is the Behavioral Analysis Unit.Within the walls of the blandly modern, anonymous  concrete buildings, the BAU consists of several  multiperson, close-knit teams, the nature of whose  duty often creates a strong sense of family. Supervisory  Special Agent Aaron Hotchner’s team was no  exception; and his profilers were due back today  from a weekend off—no duty, no on-call, no anything,  just some much deserved R and R.Rest and recreation meant, for Hotchner, reading  through fitness results, budget analyses, and police  reports for one day of his time off, rather than two.  Other agents, both on and off his team, considered  Hotchner a driven, somewhat humorless taskmaster.  He considered himself only a professional with a job  that required both concentration and detachment.Without the latter, burnout or even madness could  be the consequence, as Aaron Hotchner was a  modern-day Van Helsing tracking down real-life  monsters who made the likes of Dracula or the Wolf  Man seem quaint.This took its toll. He and Haley, his wife of eleven  years, had separated last fall. Now, they were facing  divorce, their marriage another victim of the monsters  Hotchner pursued. The severe tension of the  initial breakup had eased some, however, and he had  been welcomed to her sister’s house where he spent  Saturday afternoon with Haley and their son, Jack.  Three now, Jack was harder to chase down than most  of the UnSubs Hotchner had been after during his  FBI career. They had gone to a kid-oriented pizza  place for supper, as a family, if a broken one, and  while Jack played, the soon to be ex-husband and  -wife had talked in a guarded but not unfriendly way  about where things were, currently, with how they’d  gotten there undiscussed.After half a day with the two people on the planet  he loved most, Hotchner had gotten the best night’s  sleep he’d had in months. After sleeping in yesterday,  he had read the Sunday paper in the kitchen,  where the emptiness of the house almost overwhelmed  him. He spent most of the day in his home  office, going over reports, coming out only to microwave  his meals and catch up on cable news.For many years Haley had exhibited saintlike patience  with his workaholic ways, but these last several  years had included an array of horrific cases that  had made Hotchner only more withdrawn and had  taken him away from home for days and even weeks  at a time. When he’d turned down a nine-to-five job  on the white-collar task force, Hotchner had finally  pushed Haley too far.‘‘You can’t stop all the monsters,’’ she’d said.‘‘I have to try. I’ve seen what these creatures do  to families. Think of our son.’’‘‘No, Aaron. You think of our son. You need to put  our family first, and everybody else’s family needs  to go into second place.’’‘‘Try to understand. Stopping these people is my  way of protecting my family.’’‘‘Oh, fine, wonderful. On some spiritual, metaphysical  level, I’m sure that makes perfect sense. But  how do you protect our family,thisfamily, if you’re  away all the time?’’‘‘This is who I am, Haley. Please try to understand  that.’’‘‘I do understand that, Aaron. And I do love you.  I do still love you. But I have to leave.’’And she had.He awoke early Monday morning, after not nearly  enough sleep, eased out of bed, showered, dressed  in his best navy blue suit, and came into the office.  A tall, broad-shouldered yet slender man with  dark hair and burning brown eyes, Hotchner bore  the pale complexion of an indoor animal, although  spending half a day outside with Jack and Haley had  added a little pink to high, sharp cheekbones. His  look, his demeanor, were fitting for the CEO of a  Fortune 500 company, but he made considerably less,  even if his responsibilities were similarly demanding.  Seated behind a desk neatly piled with files, Hotchner  sipped his coffee and checked his watch. The  rest of the team would be rolling in over the next  half hour.That Hotchner was in charge of the team went beyond  his assigned role to his nature, and it was in  his nature to lead by example. Part of that meant  being first in (and last out) of the office, with the  exception of media maven Jennifer Jareau. Consequently,  he had unlocked his door a full hour before  the start of shift.The first agent to get off the elevator and stride  into the bullpen area below Hotchner’s office was  Emily Prentiss. A willowy, quietly stylish brunette  whose hair touched her shoulders, the thirtyish Prentiss  had been a member of the BAU for over a year  now. The well-connected daughter of a diplomat,  with the looks of a fashion model and the intellect  of a physicist, she’d served FBI tours in both St. Louis  and Chicago before the FBI foisted her on Hotchner;  but he had come to respect and value her—Prentiss  worked hard, maintained a cool professional attitude  on site, and never complained about an assignment.  Further, she’d been embraced by the rest of team  over time—no small thing, as she’d replaced a popular  agent who’d gone over the line. As she sat at her  desk, Prentiss glanced up at him through the window  separating Hotchner’s office from the bullpen.  When she saw him through the open venetian blinds,  she nodded and smiled, just a little.Hotchner nodded back, did not return the smile,  then looked down at the file in front of him. He  worked a while.Next in was the team’s youngest member, Dr.  Spencer Reid. Twenty-six and a five-year veteran of  the BAU, the gangly Reid wore gray slacks and a  blue blazer with a white shirt and a red-and-goldstriped  tie, though the collar button remained unbuttoned  and the knot loosened. The strap to his briefcase  rode his left shoulder, the case tucked under his  right arm. The overall effect of the outfit was that  Reid looked like a scholarship student who was late  for a chemistry class at some private prep school.  Reid was doing better now. A sensitive young man  who hid behind statistics on every subject, he had  not so long ago suffered through a traumatic stretch;  one of their UnSubs (unknown subjects) had taken  Reid captive and subjected him to mental and physical  abuse and, briefly drug dependence. The ordeal  had made Reid question whether he belonged in the  BAU, but Hotch and their former teammate Jason  Gideon had counseled Reid and convinced him to  stay—ironic, now that Gideon had suffered his own  burnout and had gone off on his soul-searching  way.Every agent on his team was talented, even gifted,  but Hotchner knew that Reid—with his triple PhDs  in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Engineering from  Cal Tech—was a special case, and very likely the  most brilliant of them all. The young man had an  eidetic memory, and a 187 IQ with a capacity to read  twenty thousand words per minute. More important,  the wealth of data at the agent’s mental fingertips  had over time interwoven with his ever-growing profiling  skills. No question, Reid was a key asset to  Hotchner’s team.Coming into the bullpen from her office was Supervisory  Special Agent Jennifer Jareau, a quietly  stunning blue-eyed blonde who served as the BAU’s  Media and Local Law Enforcement Liaison. JJ looked  typically crisp and professional in black slacks and  black pumps with a white blouse under a black  waistcoat. A Georgetown journalism graduate, she  wasn’t much older than Reid and, hence, the second  youngest member of the team. Over the last several  years, Hotchner had watched with considerable satisfaction  as Jareau’s maturity leapt beyond her youth.The newest member of their team was nothing less  than a legend in the FBI, and a bestselling author to  boot, as well as a top lecturer both within the profession  and without. The fiftyish David Rossi had the  look of a professor at a small college—black hair,  well-trimmed goatee, and casual business attire (blue  work shirt with a striped tie under a gray sports  jacket and, of course, jeans). When he strolled out of  the elevator, as if he owned the joint, his confidence  managed to stop just this side of arrogance.Maybe he didn’t own the joint, but Rossi had certainly  helped build it. Back in the day, along with  Max Ryan and Jason Gideon (a Ryan prote´ge´), Rossi  had pioneered criminal profiling, which led to the  creation of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Of this  three-man profiler Hall of Fame, Ryan had retired to  a quiet life away from the violence and heartache  that accompanied their job, Rossi to the bestsel...