In the Twilight Kingdom

"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying."

~T.S. Eliot.

*Author's Note: Well, chickadees, we have reached the end of the line for this story. I want to take a moment now to say a huge, heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who has left reviews so far, added this story to their favorites and/or followed it, or just read it at all. Half the fun in writing is having someone to share it with, and y'all have made the journey a very pleasant one. Merci, danke, grazie, gracias, toda raba, thank you, thank you, thank you.*

Benjamin Fuller's House, Rural Virginia. (6 miles north of Quantico)

"Based on the congealment of the blood, I'd say he's had a little time to sit," Adelaide Macaraeg informed them, glancing up at the agents assembled around the scene, her eyes seeming even bigger now that half of her face was obscured by the protective mask over her nose and mouth. And this scene certainly wasn't a missing Rockwell painting—Fuller was seated in a straight-backed armchair with plush cushioning, neck craned back and death-glazed eyes fixed directly at the ceiling. She took in the details: his shirt buttoned all the way up, his slacks with a sharp, crisp crease down the front, his left hand on the armrest, fingernails clean and clipped. His right arm dangled to the ground and a hand gun lay carelessly just past his fingertips, ripped from his hand by gravity. The wall behind him held a credenza, with a few framed documents hanging at eye-level. Surprisingly, the blood spatter on the wall and credenza was minimal—a fine mist, hardly any actual bits of gore, all in all relatively clean, given the circumstances.

Something didn't sit right. Didn't look right. Mac frowned slightly as she tried to piece it together. However, she continued with her task, glancing around for a thermostat, "The house is pretty warm...I'm afraid that's gonna screw around with trying to pinpoint an exact time of death."

"We know he was at Quantico until yesterday afternoon, at least," O'Donnell set his hands on his hips, giving her a slight nod. He was keeping his distance, even though he'd donned the forensic booties that allowed him to traverse the scene without tracking in new evidence. "Just do the best you can, we'll work with what we've got."

Mac nodded quickly, bending over to inspect the back of the chair while simultaneously avoiding the young man with a camera, who was photo-documenting the scene.

O'Donnell headed back into another area of the house, overseeing another set of agents, who were checking to make sure there weren't any booby traps on the property (a legitimate concern, given the similarities to the Replicator case). Mac had lost track of Mateo Cruz, but Dawson and Eden were still there, waiting to see what other discoveries she made.

Eden, now that she'd been given a set of gloves and had made sure the photographer documented the lay and location of the suicide note, was holding the letter in her hand—delicately, between her thumb and index finger, trying to avoid fine coating of blood that had misted across the paper. Dawson shifted closer to her, and she began to quietly read aloud.

"'It was only a matter of time. The Bureau built itself a gilded tower on the blood and backs of its people, grinding bone into stone….it was only a matter of time before the bones rose up and shook the walls of the tower.'"

"Jesus." Dawson commented quietly. "Creepy and poetic."

His partner gave a hum. "But it's only talking about the Bureau…not about himself, about his reasons—contrition, retribution, none of it."

Dawson was momentarily distracted by Adelaide Macaraeg, who'd stepped back, her face scrunched into a curious expression. Then she stopped, dropping into a crouch, peering up at the back of the chair from a different angle.

She popped back up again, fingers gingerly resting on either side of Benjamin Fuller's skull to gently tip his head forward.

"Shit." She announced. "This wasn't a suicide."

"What?" Judith Eden almost dropped the suicide note. Her free hand gestured haplessly towards the body. "But…you did a GSR test—"

"Yes, and it showed that he had gunshot residue on his hand," Mac nodded in the direction of Fuller's right hand, which had already been inspected and confirmed positive for GSR. "But that doesn't mean he shot himself. It just means he has GSR on his hand."

Dawson glanced around, "Either he shot the gun at something else—"

"Or someone else put it on his hand to make it look as if he fired the gun," Jude finished, her voice low and heavy with dread.

"C'mere," Mac was talking to the photographer now, jerking her chin towards the deceased. "Get some nice clean shots of this."

She waited until the photographer had taken several snaps before resuming her line of thought, "Fuller's hand is down by his side, the gun is on the floor next to it, his head tilted back—that would be consistent with the body's natural reaction once the shot has been fired. However, the angle…"

She lightly shooed the photographer out of the way, looking up at Eden and Dawson, silently waiting for them to get close enough to see the wounds. She gently titled Fuller's head back to its original position.

"The bullet entered his forehead at point-blank range," she lightly swirled her index finger over the area, not actually touching it. "You can see, from the stippling on the skin. Not uncommon for suicide victims. Though the fact that the entry wound is in the center of the forehead instead of the side is a bit…unusual, to begin with. But that's not where things get impossible."

Tilting Fuller's head forward again, she shifted to one side so that she could gingerly cup his forehead in her left hand, freeing up her right hand to motion to the points of interest, "As you can see, the bullet exits the skull here…but there's no bullet hole in the chair or the wall or even the floor. Because…"

She tilted the head further forward, right hand highlighting an area on Benjamin Fuller's back like Vanna White showing off a prize. "The bullet goes back into the body. Right between the shoulder blades."

"Odd angle," Dawson commented. "How is that even possible?"

"Allow me," Mac set Fuller's head back into its original position, pulling off her gloves. She stepped back, lightly placing her right hand on Dawson's right shoulder, reaching up with her left hand to grab the hair at the back of his head. She gently tugged, and he followed her lead—she pulled his head back until it almost touched the space between his shoulders. "Someone forced Fuller's head back."

"And put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger," Dawson concluded as Mac released him.

Mac stepped back, motioning towards the wall again, "Explains why the blood spatter was so light, and why it stops at such an odd point—there was somebody standing the way."

"Also explains why this suicide note doesn't actually read like a suicide note," Judith frowned slightly, turning her attention back to the sheet of paper. She held it up, between herself and the overhead light. Suddenly, the frayed edges of the paper were more note-worthy, "This came from a notebook."

She turned the page over slowly, her eyes focused on the top margins, "There are indentations, like something was written on the pages preceding and following it. It's part of a larger set of writings."

"He already sounds like a whack-job—a thousand-page manifesto probably isn't too far out of the realm of possibility," Dawson returned drolly. Judith dutifully returned the faux suicide note to Macaraeg, who by now had slipped on a fresh pair of gloves.

Mac grimaced slightly as she skimmed over the page. "Man. Agent Fuller had a flair for the dramatic, I'll give him that."

Dawson was already heading down the hallway, into the back part of the house, where the bedrooms were. Eden came after him, at a much slower pace (she was completely drained, physically and emotionally, and somehow that always seemed to exacerbate her limp).

She stopped in the doorway of the first room that Dawson had entered. It was a spare bedroom, set up as a study instead—almost Spartan in its furnishings, a single pine desk with a wooden chair and a lamp set to one side, though there wasn't much room for any other furniture, as the walls were lined with bookshelves, at least half of which were spiral-bound notebooks.

"Oh. My. God." Eden's eyes were the size of saucers as she stepped fully into the room, slightly dazed at the sight of so many journals. "How the bloody hell did this man ever pass a psych evaluation?"

"They aren't all rantings and ravings," Dawson informed her, flipping through a notebook from the top shelf. "These are notes from college courses—crime analysis."

He grabbed another notebook from the next shelf, "Chemistry…."

Another notebook. "Here's notes from when he entered Academy training."

"Meticulous little tyke, wasn't he?" Eden was moving around the room at a slow pace, her eyes roving the shelves, taking it all in.

Dawson was crouching now, taking a notebook from the bottom shelf and glancing through before returning it to its proper place. He stood up, waving his hand over the bookcase. "These are all course notes. Maybe he has each section assigned to a different theme."

"Most likely," Eden had stopped on the other side of the room, where actual printed books were kept. "This bookshelf is organized according to genre—there are manuals, a collection of other people's essays and biographies…this section is all old textbooks, in order of subject. Fuller definitely had a system."

"Meticulous." Dawson repeated the word. "Pretty sure that was in the profile."

Eden hummed in agreement. "And he's certainly a loner—I've yet to see a single photograph in this house, and it's obvious that he's the only one who lives here."

"Background in chemicals," Dawson cast a wary glance back to the shelf containing textbooks.

"Mid-level job, of no real importance," Eden looked up at the ceiling, recalling the profile. "Fuller's been with Cyber division for a few years—nothing big, no huge cases—looking at his record, you couldn't even tell if the man had ever actually left the building."

"So far, the BAU's batting a thousand," Dawson intoned, neither upset nor joyous over the fact.

Another hum from Eden.

"Here we go," she stooped in front of another bookcase, pulling out an old hard-bound copy of Aesop's Fables.

Dawson came closer, cocking his head to the side in confusion. "Gonna get in a little storytime there, Jude?"

"These books don't match," she was completely unfazed by his sarcasm, motioning to the row of books. "Everything he reads is technical, textbook, nonfictional—and here we have children's books, other works of fiction. And they're not even separated according to theme or genre."

She opened the large book—the interior had been carved out, and nestled inside were more notebooks.

"I think you just found our manifesto," Dawson informed him.

She handed him a notebook and took one for herself, sitting back on her bottom as she got comfortable—this was going to take a while, she could feel it.

"God dammit to hell." Dawson's voice was low, cracked with sadness.

She looked up at him, dark brows quirked downward in askance. With a heavy sigh, he handed her the notebook.

She began to read, and then she stopped. She looked back up at her team leader, her face clouded with worry and heartbreak. "What are you gonna do, boss?"

With the sigh of a regretful executioner, he shook his head, "The only thing I can do, Jude."

FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.

"Understood, sir," Jessalyn Keller gave a curt nod, even though Jack Dawson couldn't actually see her, given the fact that he was calling her from Benjamin Fuller's house. She hung up with a sigh, looking over at Jonas Shostakovich, who was watching her with the intensity of a hawk.

"C'mon," was her only comment to him, and he understood.

They headed down the hallway—after Jess had arrived back at the Academy, Dawson had caught her up to speed on current events. Rossi and Reid had confessed to a connection between them and Linnea Charles, the dodgy reporter, and due to that confession, they'd been asked to hang around a while—though it hadn't really been a request and everyone understood that. Currently, Rossi and Reid were being held in separate rooms, to keep them from collaborating on any further details—at least until the Flying Js could get to the bottom of the whole thing with Linnea Charles and the email. The rest of the BAU had been sent home for the day, though Aaron Hotchner had very clearly expressed his displeasure at the detainment of his two agents.

With one last deep breath, Jessalyn Keller opened the door to the first room.

"Dr. Spencer Reid, you're under arrest for conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism against the federal government. Please turn around and place your hands behind your head."

~Le Fin.

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."
~Frederick Buechner.

*Author's Note: This story's sequel "The Highwaymen", will be here Fall 2015.*