#blue 5

Like all creatures great and small, I took a fall and found out I could bleed.

His name was John Novak. He was 38, divorced, and taught third grade at the local elementary school. He'd spent his childhood as an Army brat, both parents serving their country until they retired. His ex-wife had been military, too, and over the years he'd nursed a quiet, festering resentment for the disciplined strength everyone in his life—save Novak himself—seemed to possess. He lived by everyone else's timetable, on everyone else's terms, and he was tired of it. His anger had boiled over when Elizabeth Mussen, the pretty young thing he'd spied jogging one day not long after his divorce, laughed in his face when he asked her out.

He was impotent, both sexually and in life, and her laughter had made him feel powerless and small, like a grub squirming in the sudden sun when a child kicks over a rock. The rage and humiliation had surged through him, but he'd just smiled and walked away. He never forgot her laugh, and as he wrapped his large hands around her throat and squeezed the life out of her he had been the one laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing.

There had been some peace for him after that. An oasis of calm in his otherwise turbulent existence. But eventually, as it always did, the oasis ran dry and the turbulence returned.

He found he preferred women like his ex-wife, like his mother: strong-looking, capable women, women who eyed him with a mixture of derision and something like pity. He watched them, followed them, learned them, and eventually he killed them. There was such a thrill in that, in watching their eyes go big and frightened, and then cold and blank.

He'd seen a sketch of himself on the news that morning. His face was all over the paper. With a familiar feeling of resignation he ambled into the sheriff's office and offered himself to them. When the young, newly elected sheriff asked him why he'd turned himself in, Novak just shrugged. "It's Saturday," he said. "I didn't have anything better to do."

Now the team, the sheriff, a CSU team up from Olympia, and John Novak were tramping through the woods surrounding the park that had been Novak's preferred hunting ground. He claimed he could find the bodies without much trouble, but night was coming on, it looked like rain, and so far they hadn't found squat.

"Tonya is close by here," he said. "There's a tree…a really big tree…."

"A tree in the woods," Prentiss remarked with a snort. "Imagine."

Novak gave her a long, steady look. "I wish I'd met you sooner," he said quietly.

"Me too," she told him. "You'd be in jail by now and those women would still be alive."

He smiled, but Hotch stepped between them before he could say anything further. "I'm calling it. You're leading us on a wild goose chase, Novak, and we're done playing your games." He lifted his walkie, but Novak forestalled him.

"Wait, there it is! That's the tree." Hampered by the foot restraints, he hobbled across a small clearing, Morgan and a deputy hot on his heels, and indicated a huge conifer with a knobby, moss-coated trunk. "She's here," he said.

Hotch glared, but he relented with a curt nod. "If there's nothing here, we're done," he warned. It was the fourth time Novak had claimed to find the right spot; Hotch suspected he was doing this for attention, and for the thrill of watching so many people jump at his command. Once he killed a new woman and placed her body, he probably forgot completely where he'd dumped the last one.

The CSU team was scrambling around the clearing setting up a perimeter for the ground-penetrating radar they would use to search for Tonya Surratt's remains. After so long and in such verdant conditions, corpse-sniffing dogs were unreliable, and it wasn't worth the time or effort to dig everywhere Novak indicated. A tech was peering at the monitor as the images began to come through, and for a long time the clearing was silent save for the occasional instruction or comment passed between the radar operators.

Suddenly the tech at the screen let out a whistle. "Agents, I think we've got something. Look at this."

Everyone huddled around the screen, and he pointed out the lighter blob among many other blobs. "It's not a rock; too much air." The image became clearer with each pass, and eventually they all could pick specific images out of the blur.

"Three skulls," Reid said. He turned to blink at Novak. "You said this was Tonya Surratt's grave."

"So it is," the man said. "I didn't want her to be lonely. I always try to make sure they have company."

You keep it quiet, But you think you might disappear Before the end.

Time had slowed to a crawl. Once they realized Novak was (finally) telling the truth, the long, slow process of excavation had begun. The skeletal remains of three women were uncovered, but he refused to identify the other two. He wouldn't even confirm or deny that either one were one of the other six known victims. He just shrugged and smiled and remained smugly silent.

"We're wasting time," Reid said. "We need to find those other women, and he's just standing there twiddling his thumbs."

Rossi nodded agreement. "Novak's loving this. It's sheer luck we stumbled on this grave. I don't think he'll lead us to the others."

"Like the Green River Killer," Morgan said. "Once he's done with these women, he just forgets them. They barely even register for him."

"Let's hope to God his victim count isn't that high," Rossi said.

"Garcia doesn't think so," Prentiss said. "She's been searching pretty hard since he turned himself in, cross-referencing his past addresses with missing persons, but so far it looks like Elizabeth Mussen really was the first victim."

"He got a late start," Morgan commented, "but he made up for it with speed: at least 7 women in a little over a year."

Reid stepped away from the group under the pretense of freshening his coffee. He paused when he saw her, but he wasn't terribly surprised. It was raining, but she was dry. It was chilly, but she wore only a thin sweater and seemed unaffected by the cold. Her face was composed, but he could sense the tension running through her. "You're not here, right? They've been here a lot longer." It was a stupid thing to say, he thought, but it was all he could think of.

She wiped her dry nose with a quick pass of her sleeve. "Am I crying?"

"No," he said, face contorting in confusion. "You look fine."

"It's cold. I should be cold."

He cleared his throat. "I thought you said…I thought you felt the same. Now. As before."

She looked away, out toward the brilliantly illuminated crime scene. "I guess not. I guess I hadn't noticed before. No, I'm not here. I don't know who they are."

"Where are you? I'd like to find you, Elle. You deserve—"

"I told you it doesn't matter," she said. "I'm not here for that. I came to look at him." She nodded toward Novak; a grim-faced Hotch and a nervous sheriff were guarding him. They made sure he couldn't see what was going on at the gravesite.

Reid followed her gaze. "Is he the one?"

Her mouth quivered for an instant. "Yes" was her brusque reply. The angular planes of her face were tight, the skin stretched over the strong bones like a mask. A muscle twitched in her cheek.

"I'm sorry, Elle." There was a tremor beneath his whisper, and she shook it off.

"It doesn't matter," she repeated. "You couldn't have stopped it, even if you'd been here. Things happen; good, bad, ugly, beautiful; and they'll keep on happening no matter what any of us do about it."

"Death's made you a philosopher," he said with a small attempt at levity.

A slow smile unfurled across her features, and she seemed to relax a fraction. They watched the excavation in silence for a time, but eventually she spoke again. "He won't tell you where I am. These three," she said with a wave toward the scene, "don't matter much to him anymore. They've been here a while. He won't tell you where I am, and you're lucky those hikers found Jennifer and Monica."

"We figured as much. I wish—"

"Don't." She closed her eyes; pressed her fingers against the lids. "Go back to your motel," she told him. "Get some sleep. I'm not sure when I'll see you again."

"Wait, what?" His face scrunched. "You're leaving? You're done now?"

"You didn't think I'd haunt you forever, did you?"

"Well, no, but—"

"I don't know what'll happen now. I just know I'm tired, and I wish I could cry. That's all."

He didn't know what to say to this, so he thought it best to remain silent. The woods seemed oppressive; the rain dripped in a steady tattoo. Reid shivered and continued the vigil, his friend's weary, dry-eyed ghost at his side.

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