I don’t know if any of you guys watch 9-1-1, but I just started a new crossover fic for Criminal Minds x 9-1-1 (mainly because I want Athena and Emily bestieism because they’re both iconic badasses but still)! There is gonna be a lot of hotchniss and a lot of bathena and I’m just excited for their friendship to blossom tbh!
Title: Seven Seals
Synopsis: [“Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one seated on the throne. It had writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals.” – Rev 5:2
The murders don't make sense on paper. The victims are children, the locations are - seemingly - random and scattered, and the methods are inconsistent enough that she could almost be talked into doubting there's a connection there at all. But Athena has looked far too families in the eye over the past three months to begin doubting herself now. To back away from this. And when she realizes that she and her task force are beginning to get a little too in over their heads, she does the only thing she can think to do - for both her people and their current case.
She makes a call to Quantico.
Hotch and his team have worked cases that would keep most people up at night. That would make some never want to step outside their front door again. But what's waiting for them in the City of Los Angeles is something else entirely, and the further they get into it? The clearer it becomes that whoever is responsible for this has only just begun.]
Read here on AO3 or read here under the cut!
———
“Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one seated on the throne. It had writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals.” – Rev 5:2
Athena wouldn’t say it was the sudden ringing of her cell phone on her nightstand that woke her—because for it to do so would mean she’d actually managed to get some sleep, a luxury that had been denied to her these past few weeks—but the sound was enough to jolt her out of the semi-relaxed state she’d just begun falling into since coming to bed three hours ago.
Reaching blindly for her phone, she grabbed it and turned the screen towards herself before her stomach dropped at seeing Rick Romero’s caller ID. Even without accepting his incoming call, she would have known why he was calling her at three in the morning, but she accepted it anyway, rolling onto her back beneath the comforter and brushing her hair from her face.
“Where?” She didn’t even give him time to speak, her voice rough and weary.
He sighed on the other end. “Foodbank on 4th. Homeless guy called it in on a payphone.”
“Seal the scene,” She told him. “I’ll be there in ten.”
She hung up before he had the chance to respond, pulling back the covers and climbing out of bed with a soft groan. She already knew exactly what she was going to see when she got on scene. Another child. Another brutally murdered child. It was a sight she’d seen not once but twice in as many months, and now with this third victim? She knew without a doubt that they had a serial killer on their hands. The murders were connected in one way or another - she could feel it - she just couldn’t work out how, and it was really beginning to piss her off.
“Another one?” She heard Bobby’s voice - quiet and groggy - from the bed as she opened the closet door, and she glanced over her shoulder at him while pulling out one of her sweaters.
“Yeah.” She said, grabbing some pants from the chest of drawers and lying them on the bed.
He pushed himself up on an elbow and ran a hand over his face as he yawned, running that same hand through his sleep-mussed hair seconds later as he watched her begin to remove her pajamas in the dim light the lamp offered. “When was the last time you got some sleep? And I mean actual sleep, not just five minutes of…whatever it is you’ve been getting lately.”
She shrugged, pulling her sweater on over her head. “I have no idea.”
“Thena, you’re gonna run yourself into the ground if you keep going like this,” He told her. “I’m not telling you to stop working on the case - I know how much good that would do - just…maybe speak with someone about taking over for a couple days. You need to sleep.”
Punching the keycode into her gun safe, she opened the door before pausing for a moment and sighing under her breath. He was right, she knew, but she just couldn’t back away from this case. Not for a few minutes, let alone for a few days. She’d looked too many families in the eye and watched their world crumble around them in seconds flat the past two - soon to be three - months to do that. She was too involved. She didn’t want anyone else handling it.
Taking out her gun and grabbing her badge, she put both in her bag before grabbing it and pulling the strap up over her shoulder while turning to face her husband for a second time.
“I’ll sleep when this son of a bitch is in custody.” She told him bluntly.
The corner of his mouth twitched into a tired smile.
Truth be told, he’d known that was going to be her response.
“Alright,” He murmured. “Just be careful.”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly at him before making her way around to his side of the bed and bending down to kiss him softly, touching the back of her hand to his cheek when she pulled away from him again. “I promise you,” She told him, her voice quiet. “Love you.”
“Love you too.” He replied as he laid himself back down and tucked an arm under his head.
She made her way swiftly out of their bedroom then, closing the door and making her way up the steps to the front door where her sneakers were still sitting on the mat. She slipped her feet into them and laced them before grabbing her keys from the cabinet and stepping out into the night, locking the front door behind her and clicking her key to unlock the car.
From home to the foodbank, it was about a ten-minute drive, and when she arrived on the scene Rick was already there - the crime scene completely sealed just like she’d asked for. She climbed out and made her way over to him, and the moment she saw the body on the ground her breath caught in the back of her throat and she felt her stomach lurch slightly.
“Oh my God…” She breathed.
The victim was female, with long brown hair and pale skin. The crime scene wasn’t as brutal as the first two had been—there was no catastrophic blood loss and no visible injuries to her body they could see—but it was how emaciated the girl was that got her. There was nothing to her. Nothing at all. She was completely skin and bone, totally different to the first victims.
“If this is our guy…” Rick said slowly, turning his head to look in her direction before turning his attention back to the body lying on the ground. “He’d have to have had her a long time.”
She nodded, reaching into the back pocket of her pants for her cell. “Before he abducted the first one, I’d say. This level of emaciation takes months. I’ll give dispatch a call and ask them about missing child reports going back five, six months. She has to be in there somewhere.”
She dialled the number then, and it wasn’t long before Maddie picked up at the other end.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” Her voice came through the phone.
“Maddie? It’s Athena.” She told her, pushing a hand into one of her pant pockets.
“Athena? Hey, what can I do for you?” Maddie asked.
She glanced down at the little girl on the floor for a moment before clearing her throat and responding. “Romero and I are on scene at the foodbank on 4th. Could you pull up missing child reports made about five…six months ago? Focus on females, aged about nine or ten.”
Maddie was quiet for a time, the only sound coming through the phone the sound of typing as she pulled up the reports on her computer, but before too long she spoke up once again.
“I got way too many, Athena, is there any way to narrow things down?”
“She has long brown hair,” She glanced Rick’s way and placed a hand over the microphone. “Did you see if she has any identifiable marks? Like a birthmark or a scar? Anything at all?”
“She has a birthmark behind her left ear.” He told her.
“She has a birthmark behind her left ear,” She relayed the information to Maddie, waiting for her to type those two things into the computer to filter the results. She knew that—likely—it took a minute or two at the most, but in that moment it felt like it was taking Maddie hours.
Eventually, Maddie sighed. “The reports for between June and July are still in their hundreds, Athena. If you wanted to look through them at the precinct, I could send you what we have?”
She knew that going through each one of those hundreds of reports would take time - time they didn’t really have - but she also knew she had a dedicated task force and that this little girl deserved justice and her family needed closure for what happened to her. If this was the only way for her to ensure that they all received as such, then it was genuinely a no-brainer.
“Yeah, send it all over,” She shook her head. “Thanks, Maddie.”
“Of course,” Maddie replied. “If you need anything else, just call.”
She hung up the phone then, tucking it back into her pant pocket and glancing Rick’s way. “Maddie says the reports are in their hundreds,” She explained to him. “She’s going to send them over, so when we get back to the precinct I want the task force to go through each of them thoroughly. She has to be among them all. Children don’t just go missing unnoticed.”
Just as she finished speaking, CSI pulled up at the side of the road, and she and Rick turned together while the team climbed out of their cars and began making their way over to them.
The two of them stepped back as the team moved in around the little girl, setting down their equipment. She watched them work for a moment - in the same careful, methodical way that they had at the first two crime scenes - and she felt that familiar feeling settling in her chest.
“You alright?” Rick finally asked her, his voice lowered so only she could hear him.
She scoffed. Of course, she wasn’t alright. No-one could be standing there, looking at what she was looking at right now, and be alright. In any sense. “No,” She muttered softly. “You?”
“No.” He echoed.
Eventually, the CSI team lead - Dr. Dale Korascic, who’d been with them at all three scenes - stood and turned his attention back to the two of them. “Well, there’s no signs of a struggle. No visible trauma to her extremities and no defensive wounds either.” He explained to them.
“So she wasn’t fighting back.” She said.
“Either that, or she simply didn’t have the strength to,” He shrugged. “Given her condition? I would probably lean more towards the latter. Cause of death is going to need an autopsy, of course, but if you want my opinion? I’d say starvation, plain and simple. In combination with something else, maybe. Her lips have some discolouration to them. Raises some questions.”
She nodded. “When can you get me results?”
“I’ll expedite,” He told her. “You’ll have a preliminary report before the end of tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Korascic.” She breathed a slight sigh of relief.
Knowing there wasn’t much more the two of them could do now that the CSI were on scene, she and Rick began making their way back to their cars parked nearby. Climbing into hers, she sat there for a moment and just closed her eyes - allowing her brain a second to simply process all that she’d seen, not just tonight but over the past three months - before pulling herself back together, starting up the engine, and beginning to follow Rick to the precinct.
———
There was something about the precinct at four in the morning that differed from the rest of the day. It had a quietness to it that just didn’t exist when the rest of the world was awake—the kind of quiet that allowed you to hear the soft hum of the ventilation system, the tap of keyboards, the sound of a coffee pot bubbling. She’d always found a measure of comfort in it on her longer shifts, but not tonight. No, nothing could bring her any comfort right now.
Setting her bag down on her desk, she sank into the plush leather chair behind it and rested her elbows on the surface, burying her face in her hands and running her nails through her hair with a low, gentle groan. She hadn’t thought it would look like this. She’d made captain eighteen months ago, and she’d known that eventually she’d be handling some awful cases. Hell, she’d already handled her fair share rising through the ranks. But this was so different.
Naively, probably, she’d thought that the weight of cases like this would be more distributed at this level. That there would be some layer of procedural distance between herself and the absolute worst of it. Instead, though, she’d become more involved than ever. The past three months had been spent sitting in briefing rooms with FBI liaisons and family advocates, just poring over photograph after photograph of crime scenes she would give anything to unsee.
Shaking her head to refocus herself, she woke up her computer and after a few minutes she found the missing person reports that Maddie had sent over. Leaning back in her chair, she cleared her throat before clicking on the first one, opening it up and beginning to study it.
By the time six o’clock rolled around, the rest of the task force had arrived at the precinct. Ransone had arrived first, followed by Detectives Munroe and Stevens, and once they’d all had the chance to change into their uniforms and grab some coffee, she and Rick had led them into the briefing room where the whiteboard holding all the information they had was.
Standing there in front of them all, she took a breath and began speaking.
“Third victim, female, aged between nine to eleven, found at the foodbank on 4th at around two-thirty a.m. this morning. There was no visible cause of death,” She explained to them. “There were differences with this one than with the previous two. There were no injuries - at least none as severe as the first two victims sustained - and there was no overkill. Dale says he’s going to expedite the autopsy results, but his opinion is that the C.O.D is starvation.”
“He’s escalating.” Munroe said from where she was sitting at the table. “The interval between two and three is shorter than the interval between one and two. Only by a week or so, but…”
She shook her head. “Romero and I think he had this girl before he even abducted the other two. The level of emaciation she suffered is significant. It would have taken months for him to get her to such a state, and the fact that it took us this long to locate her means she was killed recently. He had to have been feeding her just enough to keep her alive until he was ready. For what, though, I still have no idea. I have no idea what’s going on inside his head.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room before she began to speak again.
“If this girl was taken in June or July, as the level of emaciation would suggest, then I’d say we’re looking at someone who started planning this out maybe eight, nine months ago...” She told them carefully. “All of the missing child reports from the window of June-July that match our parameters have been sent over. Female, approximately the right age, with long brown hair. There are around three-hundred of them and I want each one of them cross—referenced against the birthmark on the body by lunchtime today. When they get sent over, I also want Dale’s trace analysis cross-referenced against every bit of evidence we have from the first two scenes. Soil composition, fibre, anything. The locations the bodies have been found in means that he’s transporting them. And he needs to be doing so in some vehicle.”
Ransone frowned. “What about the foodbank? Were there any cameras?”
She nodded. “One, but it was covering the main entrance. I’m having the footage pulled as we speak, but I’m not holding out much hope. The body was found on the east side, tucked against the wall. It’s not in the camera’s field of view, so it’d be a miracle if it got anything.”
He nodded, tapping his pen against his pad. “The homeless man who called it in?”
“He was gone by the time I got on scene,” Rick interjected. “No name, no description. But he used the payphone on the corner of 4th and Mercer. Footage is being pulled from the diner.”
“Good. With any luck, it would have caught something,” Athena hummed before turning her attention to the rest of the room and clearing her throat. “Alright then. Let’s get to work.”
———
It was hours later when Ransone appeared in the doorway of her office.
“We got her,” He said bluntly, walking across the room with the missing child report in hand and setting it down in front of her on her desk. “Sofia Lee. Reported missing June fourteenth by her mother, Jennifer Lee, just out of Reseda. Has the same birthmark behind her left ear.”
She looked down at the photograph that was paper clipped to the inside of the folder, and the shiver that ran down her spine was enough of an indication that this was definitely the same little girl she and Rick had been staring down at behind the foodbank just hours ago. It was a school picture. Her dark hair was neatly groomed, and she had sparkly brown eyes and the sweetest smile. Swallowing the lump that came to her throat, she looked up at Lou.
“Good,” She said, her voice softer than intended as she leaned back in her chair and tapped her nails rhythmically against the armrests. “Contact the mother ASAP, but she’s not to be told anything over the phone. I want victim’s advocate present before anyone gives her any information, and I want a family liaison assigned before the end of the day today. Got that?”
He gave her a short nod before turning and making his way out of her office, and once he was gone she let her head fall back against the headrest of her seat with a thud. She could feel the tears beginning to prick at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
Three photographs.
Three names now.
Sofia Reyes.
Caleb Winters.
Maya Ito.
Maya, aged ten, had been found murdered near one of the local war memorials by an elderly woman out for a morning walk with her dog. It had probably been the most gruesome of the three, and the discovery had resulted in the woman suffering from a heart-attack. She could still remember the way her own stomach had turned when she and Rick had arrived. She had lost so much blood, they had been able to smell the iron. It had been extreme overkill. She’d have been dead long before he finally left her there. She’d never unsee that, she was certain.
Caleb, aged eight, had been found by a churchgoer - stuffed inside a confessional booth. It had been overkill once again, the booth soaked in blood, but he had also been posed. As if he’d been praying. And the words ‘justice’ had been etched into the wood around his body.
Now there was Sofia, in a completely different location yet again with a completely different and still unknown cause of death. While the other two had been brutally—so brutally—killed, it was as though he’d barely touched her. In the cases of Maya and Caleb, it had truly been as though the killer hadn’t been able to control himself when it came to killing them, and so what had changed with Sofia? What was different about her? It just didn’t make sense to her.
To anyone else, it would probably seem as though this third victim wasn’t connected to the first two in any way - honestly, someone could probably make her begin to doubt it herself if they argued it well enough - but she just had a gut feeling. She knew these killings were all connected. She knew all of them had been carried out by the same person. The issue was?
She had no idea how she was supposed to catch him.
The people she had working on this case were some of the best, she knew that well enough, but they didn’t have the skills required for something like this. They - herself included, she would hold her hands up- were out of their depth here, and they needed some outside help.
So she reached for the phone.
It took her quite some time, but eventually she found herself being patched through to the FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit in Quantico, and straight to the desk of Agent Aaron Hotchner.
“SSA Hotchner.” His voice came through the phone.
“Hello, Agent Hotchner,” She replied. “This is Captain Athena Grant from the LAPD. I’m the commanding officer on a serial homicide investigation out of Los Angeles. Three victims, all of them children, over a period of approximately three months - though we have reason to believe that whomever is responsible was holding our latest victim for at least five-to-six-months before we found her in the early hours of this morning. My task force has worked their hardest on this, but we’re completely in over our heads and I think we - this case - would benefit greatly from the expertise of your team in Quantico. We need the support.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment on the other side before his voice came through once again. “May I ask what makes you think the three cases are connected, Captain Grant?” He asked.
“The first two victims had the exact same level of overkill and almost identical injuries,” She explained. “The third is…different. We haven’t had the autopsy results yet with how recently the body was found - they’re being expedited - but the likely cause of death is starvation. If I’m correct, though, this is the same person and his interval between murders is shrinking. There were four-to-five weeks before the first two murders, and only three weeks between the second and third. Agent Hotchner, if I can help it I’d rather there not become a fourth. I don't want another family to have their lives ruined.”
He hummed on the other end of the line. “No, I can understand that. It sounds as though he's beginning to adapt. Trying to figure out his MO.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Captain Grant, I’d appreciate it if you sent me everything that you have. Full case files, all three victims - any information you’ve compiled - all crime scene reports and photography, and the autopsy reports for the third victim when you have them. Time is of the essence in cases like this, so my team and I will go through everything on the plane. We’ll be with you this evening, ready to begin our investigation thoroughly in the morning. Does that work?”
She breathed a deep sigh of relief at his words. “Yes. I appreciate it so much. Thank you.”
“Of course.” He replied.
Once the two of them had exchanged their good-byes, she set the phone down and felt a weight lift from her chest as she slumped slightly in her chair. There was still a long way to go. A hell of a long way to go. And the chances of another child being abducted and killed in the time it took them to catch this guy were higher than she liked to admit, but things were moving now. The BAU were joining them on the case and they were the best in the business.
She just had to keep reminding herself of that.
