Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Victimology
Reid awoke the next morning to find the ghost sitting, cross legged, in front of his dresser, watching him with that same, mournful, lonely look in his eyes. He sighed, guessing that this was going to be another one of those days where the boy followed him everywhere.
He got up, made his bed, smoothing the dark gray and white quilt so that it was perfectly flat, and walked over to the dresser, but stopped before opening the drawer he needed. He still wasn’t sure how all this worked. Would the drawer hit the boy in the back of the head as he opened it, or pass right through him? Could the boy feel pain? He wasn’t sure…
“Could you move please so I can get in there?” He asked.
The boy scooted off to the side so that he sat beside the dresser, though he gave Reid a questioning look as if he was confused as to why he would need to move. Reid peered back at him with a look that was just as confused, so the boy got up, walked over to Reid’s bedroom door, and walked right through it and came back in the same way. That answered that then.
Once Reid was ready, he grabbed his bags and headed for the train station, with the little boy following him.
The hardest part about having him around, was pretending that he wasn’t around. Reid had to remind himself that no one else could see the boy, so while his instincts were to keep track of him, make sure he was keeping up, and even to buy him a train ticket, none of that was necessary and he had to act as though he couldn’t see him either.
What surprised Reid most was just how different the boy was from a stereotypical ghost. He wasn’t see-through for one thing, except maybe for an instant while on his way to wherever he went when he wasn’t with Reid, and he didn’t float, he walked. Despite his small size, he was able to match Reid’s pace almost step for step, usually being off to his left and just barely behind him.
At the BAU, the team gathered immediately in the conference room. There was no time to waste. As Reid and the others took their seats around the table, the ghost child stood silently against the wall in the corner of the room.
Garcia grabbed the remote and began the briefing.
She pushed a button and a picture of a boy in his late teens with exceptionally pale skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes appeared on the screen.
“You my friends… are headed back to Chicago, well, technically Woodridge, which is a suburb a few miles outside the north end of the city. That’s because two days ago, nineteen year old James Boyard Kirkland aka Bo, as he was known by his friends, was tased to death at a gas station there where he stopped to fill up his truck.” She explained.
“Tasing isn’t usually fatal though, are we sure that’s the real cause of death?” Reid asked.
“Yes, although you’re right it’s not easy to kill most people with a Taser, unfortunately for James though, he had preexisting medical issues that made it a lot easier to do, specifically congenital heart disease, a combination of two to be exact, Long QT syndrome and Marfan syndrome…”
The others looked at each other in confusion before turning to Reid, expecting him to be able to explain how those specific problems would turn a Taser into an effective murder weapon.
Reid saw their ‘English please’ stares and launched into his explanation. “Long QT syndrome is a condition is which the ion channels, along which the electrical pulsations of the heart travel didn’t form properly during fetal development, that alone would put him at risk for arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat. Marfan’s syndrome also causes arrhythmia but comes with several structural defects as well… if he survived into early adulthood and was murdered instead of passing away due to natural causes that means that the structural abnormalities involved in Marfan’s were probably repaired via open heart surgery, likely when he was an infant.” Reid explained. “Garcia, did James have a pacemaker to control the arrhythmia?” He asked.
“Yes he did, he got it when he was two, it has since been replaced four times, according to his medical records, and the Taser that our unsub used, killed him by frying the latest one, causing an electrical storm in his heart that the ME says was equivalent to a grand-mal seizure.”
“Do we know where he was headed after he stopped for gas?” Morgan asked.
“Yes, he was a sophomore at Chicago Lake Michigan University, he was headed back to campus… he was going to take a summer class, but he couldn’t because his pacemaker needed replacing, the surgery itself went well, but he got an infection while he was still recovering and the doctors kept him in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit because they were afraid that the bacteria would attack his heart directly, which given his issues probably would have killed him had that happened… he was literally just cleared a few days ago to go back to school.” Garcia replied.
“Well it shows here that James was a pretty low risk victim…” Blake pointed out, reading the file in front her. “He grew up in the upper-middle class, went to parochial school from kindergarten through twelfth grade, graduated top of his class from St. Scholastica School’s high school campus… he got full ride academic scholarships to several different prestigious universities, this guy isn’t looking for easy targets or victims who won’t be missed….”
“So far, James Kirkland appears to be this unsub’s only victim, but an unsub this bold and sophisticated is unlikely to be a one-hit-wonder and given James’s medical issues, the murder weapon could have been an attempt to make his death appear to be natural or caused by mechanical failure, so there may be others we don’t know about yet… whether there are more out there or this unsub’s just getting started, we need to get ahead of this and fast. Wheels up in twenty…” Hotch ordered.
The team nodded, and went to grab their go-bags before making their way to the jet.
Reid was trying very hard to pretend he didn’t know he was being followed by his ghostly little friend, but he knew, even without looking behind him, he knew that the child was following right on his heels.
On the jet, the kid sat in the corner of the section that looked and functioned like an extra-long sofa, with Reid in the booth directly across the Isle from him. He never strayed far if he was there at all.
“So far what do we have?” Hotch asked.
“This unsub is highly organized… he probably would have had to stalk James to know that he had a pacemaker. That shows premeditation and organization.” Rossi pointed out.
“The unsub was also smart enough to wait until he was alone and use forensic counter measures… local police found the Taser but there was no DNA or prints. This unsub might be in the system and if so, he knows the second he leaves any identifiable trace evidence we’ll be that much closer to catching him.” Reid added.
“Are we sure this is even a male unsub?” Morgan asked. “Using a Tazer as a murder weapon speaks to someone who probably can’t over power their victims, plus a non/semi-violent MO like that is usually indicative of a female unsub. An ex-girlfriend might know about his heart condition and how to abuse it….”
“That is true…we should talk to his classmates and professors and find out if he had any known enemies…” Hotch decided.
“It looks like his Academic Advisor was an old friend of mine…” Reid cut in. “James was majoring in psychology, and according to his transcript, his advisor was Dr. Daniel Pierce, he was at Cal Tech back when I was there as an undergrad as a teenager, that was right after he started teaching…”
“Ok, first we’ll go to Woodridge, talk to his family, the ME, and look at the murder site to find out if anything other than the Taser might have given this unsub the upper hand… Reid and Rossi, talk to his family, Morgan, you and I will go to the crime scene, Blake and JJ, you two go to the ME and see if there’s anything more he can tell us…once we’ve learned all we can from Woodridge we’ll go to the university, at which point, Reid, talk to your friend and see if there was anything going on with James at school that might not have left a paper trail.” Hotch told them, giving everyone their marching orders.
When the plane landed in Woodridge, the team split up into three different SUVs, Rossi and Reid (ghostly company included) headed to James’ parents’ house.
While they were in the car, Garcia called Rossi with more information.
“Guys, I’ve got something.” She told them.
“What’d you find?” Reid asked.
“Turns out that while James didn’t have a criminal record, not even as a juvenile, one of his neighbors five blocks over in the same subdivision called the cops because they were creeped out by the fact that he was loitering on the edge of their yard and driving by their house a lot even though they don’t live on a direct line to the main road, he did…considering they didn’t even actually press charges and I only know about it because I dug up the police report which is from June, I’m gonna take a guess and say they weren’t upset enough about it to kill him, but it’s definitely something we didn’t know before…”
“It’s something to touch base with his family about…thanks Garcia…” Rossi replied.
“You’re welcome Sir.”
The Kirkland house was a long, rectangular bi-level right off the main street in and out of the subdivision. The lower half of the house was faced with brick, while the top half had light crème colored siding. The windows on the bottom half were plain with white trim, the windows on the upper half had bright red shutters on them.
They climbed the steps to the front door and rang the doorbell.
A woman in her mid-forties but who appeared to be significantly older, with black hair and blue eyes opened the door. She was wearing a dark purple T-shirt and a black denim skirt.
“Harriet Kirkland?” Rossi asked, guessing that she was most likely the victim’s mother.
“Yes…” She answered.
“I’m SSA David Rossi, my associate here is Dr. Spencer Reid… we’d like to talk to you about your son, James… we’re helping the police try to find out who killed him…”
“May we come in?” Reid asked.
She nodded, and beckoned them inside. They came in onto a low-riding platform with the staircase off to their left, a single step up into the living room directly in front of them. She led them to the living room and she sat in the recliner while Reid, Rossi, and Reid’s mysterious little ghost, sat on the sofa against the wall.
“What do you want to know…?” She asked, sounding worn out and defeated, as most of the families they talked to on these cases usually did.
“Did James have any enemies? Perhaps someone who might have known he’d be particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack?” Reid asked.
“Enemies? No… God no… he always had a lot of friends… he was the kind of kid who was popular but for the right reasons… you know, the one who’s so nice to everyone that no one has anything bad to say… if there was any drama, it was Bo who was always the one ending it, reminding his classmates that their petty disputes weren’t worth their friendships…” she replied.
“What happened with your neighbors? Why did the Greenfields call the police four months ago about him hanging around their house?” Rossi asked.
“Please try to understand…my son was not a stalker…”
“We aren’t saying he was…we just need to have an understanding of any potential conflicts because right now, we can’t rule anything out…” Reid clarified.
“It’s not them that Bo was interested in… it’s the house… the Greenfields have only lived there for a couple of years. Before that, the family of an old friend of Bo’s lived there, the two of them were just like brothers…”
“Did something happen to this friend?” Rossi asked.
She looked down and away from him and let out a single tortured sob while she nodded in the affirmative. “He…he died…a long time ago… when the boys were seven…it tore his parents apart, destroyed the marriage. When they separated three years ago, they just decided it was easier to both move rather than fight over the house.” She explained. “Bo was so upset when they put it up for sale…can’t begin to count how many times he kicked down the ‘for sale’ sign and threw it in the dumpster…for him there were a lot of memories in that house…”
“If you don’t mind us asking…how did his friend die?” Reid asked.
“He had heart problems of his own… Transposition of the Great Arteries and Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome… that and his also had an immune deficiency, infection took hold… spread throughout his body and… well… there was nothing the hospital could do for him at that point…up till I lost Bo, I couldn’t fathom what my friends went through… now I wish I didn’t know… soon both our boys will be in the ground… one killed by bacteria, the other by a homicidal maniac with a Taser… which is worse?”
Meanwhile at the medical examiner’s office…
JJ and Blake were talking to the ME, Dr. Melody Jackson. She was a shot woman in her late fifties with black hair and brown eyes.
“The Taser fried his pacemaker, like a power surge would a computer… it sent a much higher than normal voltage into his heart, causing it to go into tachycardia, which means that the heart was still beating, racing actually, but it wasn’t pumping… no blood was being moved, his blood pressure dropped to undetectable levels almost immediately, and from there his body started shutting down, he was dead within a few minutes, probably unconscious the entire time… the initial shock probably knocked him out…thank God for that, had he been awake this would have been a painful and terrifying way to die…” The ME explained.
“Do you think that the unsub knew that James had a pacemaker?” Blake asked.
“Oh definitely…” she replied, drawing their attention to his chest. “Do you see the pre-existing scar just above the electrical burn made by the Taser?” she asked.
They nodded.
“Whoever did this was clearly targeting the device, that scar is from implantation. It’s low enough and close enough to his shoulder that his shirt would have covered it up. So they had to have known he had one and known enough about pacemakers in general to know where it was located.” She explained.
“Does that point to the unsub having medical training?” JJ asked.
“No, this information is out there on the internet, anyone with a smart phone could’ve found it in less than five minutes." She admitted. "I know that doesn't help you identify who did this...
"That's alright..." Blake told her. "Hopefully the crime scene can tell us more..."