PrentissSo Hotch is even more intense now that Gideon's gone.
Prentiss
Do you think that's gonna change?
I certainly think we'll find out.
Prentiss
What about you? You okay?
Prentiss
Do you want to talk about it?
What's there to talk about, really?
Prentiss
Gideon.
Oh, no. He, uh- he left a letter explaining everything. Just like my dad did when he abandoned me and my mom.
Prentiss
He addressed it to you.
Yeah, yeah. You know, Gideon stood toe to toe with some of the... the sickest people on this planet. I think that took a lot of courage, right?
Prentiss
Yeah.
So, why'd he do this? It's addressed to me, but I'm- I'm not- I'm not the only one that he abandoned.
Prentiss
But why is it addressed to you? I think you need to read that letter again.
I have an eidetic memory, Emily.
Prentiss
Ah, yeah, I know, and an IQ of 187, but what do you remember about your father?
Prentiss
Well, he gave you ten years before he left, and yet you've erased all those memories. And it's too painful, I get it. But then Gideon leaves. I think you need to read that letter again, and ask yourself why, of all the people he walked away from, did he only explain himself to one person: you.
We're looking for two men. Probably white, given the neighborhoods that they hit, mid to late twenties, intelligent, and organized.
These are career criminals. One or both has done hard time, but neither presents as a convict. They would appear clean-shaven, well dressed...
Prentiss
Neighborly. This helps them talk their way into the homes. They may also be using a ruse.
LNLt. Nellis
What kind of ruse?
Given that the invasions have taken place in the evening, it could be anything. Could be door to door sales, person in distress, car trouble.
Uh, Derrick Todd Lee used a tape of a baby crying to get women to open their doors in Baton Rouge. Never underestimate their creativity.
Prentiss
These men share a very tight bond, and a mutual compulsion to kill, but their signatures reveal two very distinct personalities.
One brutalizes the parents. This is the dominant one. Sadistic, remorseless, extremely volatile.
Prentiss
The other prefers a needle. His injections are consistent with an angel of death. He's more withdrawn, sensitive, and he has a warped sense of mercy.
Prentiss
He's the first unsub I've worked who wasn't a bad guy. You know? Six months ago, Johnny McHale was just a regular person.
Every unsub is ill on some level. Most can't help what they do any more than Johnny could.
Prentiss
But he went from successful writer and artist to brutal killer in six months.
He suffered an unbelievable tragedy.
Prentiss
I know. I get it.
Prentiss
It just makes me wonder... are we all capable of becoming something like that?
Life is a hell of a thing to happen to a person.
With four known victims, we should start by re-interviewing friends and family. We're looking for a white male in his thirties to forties. And with his knowledge of circuitry and wiring, we think that he's either an electrician or an electrical engineer.
It's a job that may give him access to a victim's home or workplace, the opportunity to observe his targets.
Prentiss
They're attractive, professional women. He sees them as strong, righteous, unobtainable. So he seeks to tear them down, to reduce them to base sexual creatures and punish them.
He's a true sexual sadist. A typology we refer to as anger-excitation, meaning he becomes sexually aroused by the suffering of his victims.
Killing these women is an afterthought. Their pain is what he's after. And he takes his time, to exact maximum stimulation.
PPhilly Agent
What about his trophies? He keeps their clothes, right?
Prentiss
Yes. We believe he's using them for rehearsal fantasies. By dressing as his victims, he can relive the torture. It's during this time that he most likely pleasures himself in order to reinforce his association between suffering and gratification.
And when he becomes dissatisfied with this, he seeks out a new victim.
Keep in mind he's been this for a long time, and he's been thinking about doing it most of his life. He'll continue to evolve, finding new ways of challenging himself, increasing his stimulation threshold. There are no boundaries for this man.
Prentiss
He might need our help.
He didn't ask anyone for help.
Prentiss
Penelope, Rossi is a guy who color-coded his hand-written notes in his notebooks. Blue pen for evidential items, red pen for supposition and theory. The guy is a fussy, anal-retentive, neat freak who never leaves anything out of its place. I would say this is a scream for help.
Morgan, obsessional crimes are your specialty.
Well, there's two kinds of obsessional offenders that would send gifts to survivors. Sadists, who want to make the families keep reliving the crime, or guilt-laden offenders, desperately trying to find some type of way to apologize.
Sadists usually use something they know will remind the family of the person or the crime. Jewelry, newspaper clippings.
Prentiss
These don't look like the kind of things you would send to inflict pain on someone.
Prentiss
You know, they actually look like the kind of thing a child would send.
Okay. Well, it's rare, but an unsub who feels this much guilt sometimes commits the crime unintentionally. They tend to be developmentally disabled, extremely low IQ offender, and generally, well, they're physically large and they're very strong. Strong enough to hurt somebody accidentally.
Prentiss
Like Lennie in Of Mice and Men.
Hotch would never have taken this case. And I say "case" in the loosest sense.
Profile the facts as they are without bias. Isn't that what we do?
What facts, Rossi? Look at us. We don't have a single file.
Okay, let me help you out. Jump right in anytime. Fact one - there are no files, so it seems no case.
Prentiss
But what if there is?
One fire, fourteen deaths, five suicides.
All the suicides are connected to the original fire.
Prentiss
And all exactly two weeks apart.
Come on, Derek, you can't tell me that doesn't feel a lot like a pattern.
Prentiss
And a timeline.
A lot of people lost their kids in that fire. That's a whole world of grief, and for a few... suicide's their only way out.
Or someone decided it was.
And made it look this way?
Then we're looking for one very smart unsub.
TLDetective Tina Lopez
I am gonna take the skinny kid and Derek to the dumpsites. So, I got my cell, radio if anyone doesn't give you anything, just call me.
Prentiss
Great.
[Detective Tina turns and leaves]
She did say she wasn't good at names.
Prentiss
Remembered Derek.
Wonder how she'll describe us?
Prentiss
Oh, I am sure I don't wanna know!
Prentiss
He could be suffering from Cluster B.
TLDetective Tina Lopez
Cluster B?
Ah, cluster of personality disorders. It's also called a erratic, dramatic emotional cluster. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that differentiates itself markedly from the expectations the individual's cultures. It manifests...
[Interrupts Reid] This guy is a sick dude!
[Reid nods yes]
Prentiss
What was that?
Bureaucratic red tape. Every case we take, I have to explain why, in terms of cost and size relative to the BAU. They don't always think it's worth it.
Prentiss
They do have four agents doing the work that locals should.
Just because there isn't a dead body doesn't mean we shouldn't take the case.
Prentiss
Hey, I... the fact that law enforcement, including the FBI, can't help someone until they've been injured is appalling. All I'm saying is it is a drain on the system.
Emily. Last year in Denver, a woman was being harassed by her ex-boyfriend. Cops knew who he was, but they couldn't arrest him. We didn't take that case. She was finally granted a restraining order three days after he threw acid in her face. Right now, I don't... I don't care about limited resources. I cannot make that same mistake again.
[looking at a piece of paper] It's remarkable. Something like this makes you question everything you thought you knew.
Yeah. It's like the Monolith in 2001.
So there was actually a time when something like this was socially acceptable?
Oh... you're young. [takes the paper from Reid] The eighties left a lot of people confused.
[a photo of Prentiss from high school is revealed]
This is, uh, especially sad, though.
Prentiss
All right, very funny, you guys. Very funny. [snatches the paper from Garcia] What'd you do to it?
Prentiss
You obviously altered it in Photoshop or something. [shows the photo to Garcia] That hair?
Oh, no, Pussycat. That - that's all you. Garfield High, Class of '89.
Prentiss
[looking at the photo again] You really didn't change anything?
I hacked it, as is. You're seriously trying to tell me you don't remember rocking that look?
Perhaps your lack of recognition stems from a dissociative fugue suffered in adolescence. Say, at a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert?
[Garcia laughs]
[while entering the plane] How come I only get to travel with you guys only like every two years?
Trust me mama, it can get old.
Oh, right, like the way spa treatments in five star hotels can get old.
Prentiss
Remember the time we got on-board and they hadn't chilled the Cristal?
Oh, I almost quit the BAU that day!
Hey, you know what? You guys can joke all you like, 'cause I am never leaving this plane!
Prentiss
It's like the end of The Dead when Gretta remembers the boy she loved when she was younger and she says, "I think he died for me."
You know, James Joyce also said, "There is no heresy or philosophy so abhorrent to the church as a human being." Where can I drop you?
Prentiss
I'm gonna walk for a while.
Almost seems unreal, doesn't it?
Criminal Minds · 817 quotes
