Façades

By PaBurke

Distribution: The Nook

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, no money made, no characters created.

Spoilers: Season two of Criminal Minds, Season 1 of Supernatural

Summary: How much of a façade can you see through?

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It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia

*

"I don't know what I can tell you that I didn't already tell the other FBI agents," the most recent victim's wife told Gideon and Morgan.

Morgan had opened his mouth to give the standard line about profilers asking different questions than normal officers, but paused when he realized that she had said 'other FBI agents.' No other agents had come to interview her, Morgan was sure that the local law enforcement had, but the BAU was the only FBI agents in town.

Gideon had heard the unintended falsehood as well. "Just tell us what you told the other agents. I'm sure that we'll have additional questions. We concentrate more on emotions, than hard facts."

Mrs. Durgon shrugged. "They asked me the same things that the cops asked before. Why do we have to go through this three times?"

"Ma'am," Morgan smiled comfortly, "each time, you might remember something different."

"I haven't and the others understood that and were really gracious about it. They had great manners," she smiled. "They thanked me for the coffee."

"Did they follow you to make the coffee?" Morgan asked.

Durgon shook her head. "Why would they?"

"So you left them alone in this room?"

"No. Steve talked to them then, mostly small talk."

All three of the adults turned to look at the pre-teen witness of his father's disappearance.

"Steve," Morgan said. "What did they ask you?"

Steve shifted uncomfortably and then decided that he had no reason to. "They asked me the some of the same questions as the cops, but they didn't treat me like a kid."

"They didn't?" questioned Gideon. "How?"

"When I said that I didn't see who took my dad, they didn't keep asking like the cops." Steve frowned. "The cops didn't believe me and kept asking the same questions. These two didn't. Instead they asked about shadows and smells and sounds and they believed me when I said that it didn't sound like anything I had ever heard before." A smile peaked through the solemn boy's lips. "The short one, he made me examples of sounds for me to pick from. And every time I picked one, he made three more that were similar but different. He never acted like he was embarrassed for making noises for me or that I was stupid for not knowing the sound on my own. He told me that I did the right thing running into the house with my baby sister and waking up my mom."

"You really did do the right thing," Gideon reinforced the complement to the child.

"They really weren't FBI agents," Mrs. Durgon realized.

"No ma'am," answered Morgan. "Did you by chance wash the mugs that they used?"

"Uhm, no. I have them."

"They really are FBI agents," Steve argued.

Gideon sat next to the boy and tried to explain the truth. "It takes more than an ID to be an agent."

"They have the guns too," said the boy. "And they cleared a house just like they do on TV and they don't even need a couple takes to do it right."

Gideon and Morgan were slightly skeptical, but Mrs. Durgon spoke. "He watches all of the outtakes from the cop movies and TV shows. He wants to be a director someday."

"I'm thinking about being an FBI agent now," Steve said. "It's so much cooler in real life."

"Steve, how do you know that?" Morgan asked.

Steve looked a little sheepish. "I told them that I thought some of the other kids had heard the same sound at the old Miller house. Cody and Michael went there on a dare and swear that they're not going back, ever. I figured that that was where the agents would go next, so I took a shortcut through the woods to see them in action." Steve ducked his head again.

"It's okay, Steve," Gideon reassured the boy. "Just tell us what you saw."

"Like I said, they're really real FBI agents. They cleared the house working together and they held the guns and the flashlights just like on TV. Agent Ford saw me when I peeked in the window just as they started," Steve's gaze skittered to the side for a moment. "He was really mad. He told me that it was dangerous because they were using real guns and I could have gotten shot on accident because they didn't know that I was there. He took me and put me in his car and told me not to touch anything. He gave me a little black bag and said that if the car door opened and I couldn't see anyone that I was to close my eyes and throw the bag at the door. He and the other one went into the house and… nothing happened." The boy look a bit disappointed. "Then they walked me home. Agent Ford told me that I had to look after my little sister and that I couldn't follow FBI agents because I might get hurt and then who would look after my sister?"

Gideon and Morgan were slightly confused. They looked at each other and then Gideon questioned the boy about the sounds that the fake FI agents had asked. Morgan followed the mother into the kitchen and acquired and processed the mugs that the two men had drunk from. He also took the mother's fingerprints so that they could eliminate hers from the mugs. He would get these processed ASAP.

They left the house thinking more about the fake FBI agents than the UNSUB they were chasing.

*

"Hey guys, Garcia the Great has found your answers yet again." Hotch opened his mouth to thank her but the computer geek rushed ahead. "Next time you're sending me to hunt down someone, could it not be a sadist killer? These pictures…"

"Baby girl, what are you talking about?" Morgan asked. "Did you find our UNSUB?"

"No, I found your fake Fed's and let me tell you that they are really good at faking it. The shorter one, he's Dean Winchester. He was killed in St. Louis. Someone caught him escaping from a house where he was trying to torture and murder his third victim. They shot him and left his body for the PD to find. The taller one is his brother and accomplice, Samuel."

"They're wrong," Gideon finally pronounce after a long silence.

"Aside from the fact that someone is in a grave with Winchester's name, well, yeah."

"It doesn't match the profile," Morgan told Garcia. "No sadist is going to be able to connect with a frightened child in seconds and get information out of them. And he wouldn't protect the same child and walk him home."

"I'm telling you that the prints match."

"I believe you," Gideon said.

"And I'm sending you the Dean's mug shot and the candid picture they have of Sam so that you can check with the witnesses again."

"Just send us the entire file. Thank you, baby girl."

Garcia hung up on them.

The team looked at each other, trying to get a grasp on the situation.

"Why would anyone pretend to be an FBI agent?" Reid asked.

"To pick up girls," JJ supplied with a slight smile Emily's way.

Hotch sensed a good story, but offered another explanation. "They could have been checking to see what the eye witness had seen, injecting themselves into the investigation."

"No," Gideon said. "They were asking all sorts of questions that they had to know would eventually get passed along to us. And they followed the leads that the boy told them. They Iare/I investigating the same case as we."

Morgan looked out the window to the darkening sky. "We checked the Miller house and we couldn't find anything. The Winchesters obviously checked every nook and cranny. If they found something and managed to hide it from Steve Durgon, we couldn't find evidence of it. We couldn't find any evidence of Mr. Durgon having ever been there."

Hotch looked at the team liaison. "JJ…"

"I'll find out from the St. Louis PD as much as possible and have someone dig up Winchester's grave."

The Chief of Police rushed into the temporary FBI office. "You visited the Miller house, didn't you?"

"Just this afternoon," Morgan supplied.

"It's on fire now."

The team followed the small town chief to the fire, with light flashing and sirens blaring. They were directed to park to the side so that the mutual aid fire trucks coming from other counties could get through, and so the tankers could come and go to supply water. The local volunteers were battling the blaze. They weren't having much affect on the actual fire, but they were keeping it from spreading to the woods.

The fire chief waved to the police chief. "Hank, Got your vic in the ambulance!"

The police chief ran that way and was followed by the entire BAU team. Mr. Durgon was in the ambulance. He was alive.

But the changes that had been inflicted on him in the last forty-eight hours were stark: he had lost thirty pounds and his healthy tan. He was white as a sheet (comparable to Reid's normal complexion.)

Gideon was the first to question the victim. "Mr. Durgon? Do you remember anything?"

Durgon shook his head no. "It was dark and I was screaming and it hurt."

"How did it hurt?" asked Hotchner.

"Like someone was squeezing me, from the inside."

"Was it cold or damp?" Prentiss suggested.

"No, no. It was hot." Durgon shivered… so very, very hot.

So the man couldn't have been in a root cellar. Where had he been? "How did you get out?" Gideon asked.

"Two… men, maybe. They said that Stevie sent them for me… I think. It was just a blur. I saw light and felt hands pulling me toward it."

"Do you remember any pinpricks on your skin?" Reid was obviously trying to narrow down the drugs used.

Durgon shook his head no. They'd have to do a complete tox screen on him ASAP.

Gideon took a page from the Winchesters. "What about sounds?"

Durgon winced. "The same, over and over…" He shivered but flatly refused a blanket from the paramedic. He'd rather be cold.

"Describe it for me," Gideon ordered.

Durgon shook his head. "Please, no. I need to get it out of my head. Not add to it."

"We need to find who did this to you," Hotchner said softly. "So that this won't happen again."

Durgon accepted that reason. No one deserved what he had endured. "It was a Chur-chunk…Screetkch."

The BAU team looked at each other wondering what could possibly make that sound. It was then that most of them realized that Morgan was gone. They knew that he would be covering the most likely escape routes. Why had this victim escaped? None of the others had.

Morgan was having his own set of problems. When he had followed the trail that young Steve Durgon had spoken of, he ran into Dean Winchester. The young man had a gasoline can in one had and a sawed-off shotgun in the other.

Morgan pointed his gun at him and had ordered him to "Freeze!"

Dean had pouted and lifted his hands. "Oh man, why couldn't one of the hot FBI agents have followed me?"

"All of them are good at seeing through the phony FBI schitch."

"All those other posers make it hard to catch a girl."

Morgan was not about to be distracted. "Where is your brother?"

A strong forearm snaked around Morgan's neck. "Here, sir," a voice taunted.

Dean moved incredibly fast and disarmed him while he was distracted with trying to breathe. The man choking Morgan, presumably Sam Winchester, administered the text-book counter-move to every escape he attempted. Working together, the two young men patted Morgan down and absconded with any possible weapons and then handcuffed him to a tree with his own cuffs. The tree had so wide a circumference that Morgan didn't have a chance to reach for his belt buckle or anything else that might be useful. They also tore the sleeve off of Morgan's shirt and used it as a gag.

Only minutes after Morgan had stumbled across the Winchester brothers, he was put out of service and watching them run down the path.

Damnit.

He was never going to hear the end of this little adventure from the rest of the BAU team.

One thing was for sure, they didn't act like serial killers.

They were mission-oriented, obsessive, dangerous people, but they hadn't even considered hurting Morgan and they had left his gun (magazine separated from the rest in case he managed to escape the cuffs).

The BAU would be sure to be chasing those brothers next.

Morgan comforted himself with the idea of cuffing them, next time.

*

Truth is a great flirt. ~Franz Liszt

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