Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
Author's Note: This is the beginning of a 7-story series in which I explore the "criminal mind" by evolving Reid into a killer from his current status in Season 6. Here is a list of ominous-sounding titles: Premeditated; Trafficking; Gigascale; Nanoscale; For Better, For Worse; Sickness and Health; Normal. In the process, all the characters will be royally screwed with, broken down and built up, until they will want to leap out of the TV screen to strangle me. Reid is in for the best and worst of times. Since this series is so long, I am happy to take suggestions from readers and fellow writers. Are there specific scenes/interactions/details that you would like to see at some point in the series? I will acknowledge any input that I end up using. If you have any thoughts, please send me a pm or leave me a review. You can even tell me what an insane little creeper I am for writing this series.
Chapter 1
The frail old man was so light that Reid had no trouble at all flipping the body over the side of the dumpster. The body landed with a soft thud, like a messenger bag hitting the floor after a tedious day's work. Reid closed the lid of the dumpster, wiped his hands on his coat, and looked about in all directions. He wasn't sure exactly where he was, but the low concrete buildings, punctuated with roll-up garage doors, indicated a self-storage facility.
Out of the corner of his eye, down a narrow gutter between two buildings, Reid spotted movement. It was a squad car, ambling down the path in the aisle to his right. Behind it was a second squad car, swerving around the first to drive two abreast. The path was wide. It was covered with potholes and patches of dirty snow.
Reid exhaled a breath of warm moist air. The small white cloud leaped out of his mouth with the force of his lungs behind it. In the atmosphere, it hung for a moment, uncertain of its position in the larger world, before it dissipated, each of its molecules pursuing an individual trajectory into a great unknown.
Reid exhaled again, this time for the old man. He imagined the second cloud as the soul of his victim, floating away to Heaven, or wherever souls went after they vacated their bodies.
A third breath, and it was high time to flee. Reid ducked under a pipe that obstructed the opening to the gutter between the buildings. A tiny tuft of green grass poked up from a crevice in the pavement. Reid winced as he accidentally trampled upon it. He wondered how it had found the means to thrive, here in this sunless passage barely wide enough for one skinny person to wiggle through sideways. He marveled at the tenacity of life.
At the same time, he pictured a rotund form, like that of Garcia or a pregnant JJ, attempting to squeeze through the narrow passage. He pictured Garcia and JJ getting stuck in the passage and having to be pulled out by Hotch and Morgan. It didn't work at first, not until Prentiss came to the rescue, applying dabs of lubricant all along the body-wall interface. Afterwards, she set the tube on the ground and darted to the back of the line, where she wrapped her arms around Hotch's waist and wrenched Hotch backwards with all her strength. Hotch, who had wrapped his arms around Morgan's waist, wrenched Morgan backwards as well, and the whole line tumbled onto the concrete as Garcia and JJ crashed out of the passage. JJ was the only one who didn't fall flat on her back, as Prentiss, Hotch, and Morgan had done, or flat on her face, as Garcia had done. Reid exhaled a sigh of relief, this time for Henry. Falling while heavily pregnant was sure to damage the baby.
Reid inhaled, replacing the sigh and looking around for Rossi. He heard him before he saw him. Rossi arrived in the form of a sharp clap closing in from the middle distance. The first clap was followed by a series of claps, an amused snicker, and the sound of Italian leather shoes hitting the pavement. The others, laughed at by the older profiler, laughed along with him, genuinely amused by their own follies.
Suddenly, Reid couldn't see them anymore. It was as if the sound of Rossi's clapping had opened up the auditory channel and closed down the visual channel. The auditory channel lacked the richness and vibrancy of the visual channel. It was a poor substitute. All that Reid was left with, in the cramped alcove halfway down the passage, were fading voices, fading footsteps, and a crystal-clear vision of his former friends and colleagues in his mind's eye. He crouched down, wrapped his arms around his knees, and wallowed.
An engine purred into silence on the path outside the passage. Car doors clicked open and slammed shut. Keys, or perhaps handcuffs, clinked a few feet above the ground.
Reid covered his nose and mouth with his hands, blocking off the sound of his breathing. He made himself as small as he could, scrunching up against the walls of the alcove and willing the alcove to absorb his body into its crumbling matrix. He was paralyzed, but not by fear. The sequence of physical responses was all wrong. By now, his heart should have been pounding, his muscles should have been twitching, his hands should have been sweating, but they were not. The physical apathy made no sense, but Reid ignored the signs. He pulled his knees closer to his chin and closed his eyes, hoping that if he saw no one, then no one would see him.
Outside, on the pothole-dotted path, the police officers went about their business. Reid heard them searching the storage units one by one, undoing the locks and chains, rolling up the doors, clicking their flashlights on to illuminate the darkness within. He recognized three different voices. The three officers conversed with each other as they searched the premises. They mentioned a box of something and a label over something. They didn't mention the body in the dumpster or the UnSub in the alcove.
In a rush of jubilance, Reid realized that the authorities were not looking for him. They were looking for an object rather than a person. They were not even investigating a murder. Reid willed them to steer clear of the dumpster.
The search ended with the blowing of a whistle. The clarion call came from a distance, beyond multiple aisles of storage units. On the path, the engines rumbled to life. Car doors clicked open and slammed shut. Tires ground against pavement. A gust of wind whooshed through the aisle, pushing the officers on their way from a place where they were not welcome.
In the alcove, Reid relaxed. He smiled, a huge teeth-baring cheek-cracking lung-clearing exhalation of unadulterated bliss. He was free and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. He chuckled as he stood up and wiped away the soggy leaves and damp earth that clung to his coat and pants. He shook his head like a wet puppy to clear away the unknown detritus that had fallen from the ceiling of the alcove. Despite the biting chill, Reid felt warm from his torso to his toes. He attributed the warmth to his heart, which beat slowly and steadily beneath his shirt and sweater. His heart was a metronome, beating out the even predictable rhythm of a calm peaceful happiness.
After he awakened from the dream, the warm joyful feeling shed its even predictability. It built and built and built, until it was like the biggest sigh of relief or the biggest sneeze that a person could ever experience. It cleared away all other feelings, filling all the spaces between all the molecules in the atmosphere, until the atmosphere was chockful of molecules, packed and touching, more like molecules in a solid than molecules in a gas, but aggregating to form a shimmering transparent gas nonetheless. In the bliss after the storm, Reid felt neither fear or disgust, and certainly not remorse.
Reid peeked over his computer screen at Morgan and Prentiss. They sat at their desks with their chairs facing each other, flipping through a pile of folders that they passed back and forth between them. Morgan would grab a case file from a stack on his desk, make some notations in the file, pass the file to Prentiss, and Prentiss would make further notations before adding the file to a stack on her own desk.
It was a ritual that they engaged in every month, usually on the last Thursday before completed case files were due on Friday. In the BAU, Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss were unofficial partners who did their fieldwork together and wrote up their case files together. Others need not apply.
Reid stood up, intending to visit the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.
"Hey Morgan, you want coffee?" Reid asked.
"Nah," Morgan didn't look up from his file.
"Emily?" Reid leaned over the desk.
"None for me, thanks," Prentiss glanced up, but dropped her eyes back down almost immediately, eager to circle an enumerated list in red ink.
Reid paused, leaned in for a closer look at the file, and shuffled off to the kitchen before Prentiss could notice the intrusion. He had been deliberating with himself about striking up a conversation with his friends and colleagues, but they were so absorbed in their paperwork that he decided not to interrupt the flow of the ritual. Morgan hated paperwork, and so did Prentiss, but when the two of them worked together to crunch through a stack of case files, they were a well-oiled machine. Others need not apply.
From the kitchen, Reid peeked over his cup at Morgan and Prentiss. He took a sip of his coffee, swirling the liquid, tasteless and caustic, around his mouth before relaxing his throat and letting it slide down his gullet. He searched through his memory banks, trying to pinpoint the exact moment in time when Morgan had started hating him.
Reid had only waded through 1.79% of his social interactions with Morgan when he was jolted out of his reflective mood. Hotch approached with his briefcase, walking briskly through the bullpen on his way out of the office.
"Leaving early?" Reid asked.
"Yeah, see you tomorrow," Hotch sped towards the elevator without further explanation.
Reid assumed that something had come up with Jack. He hoped that it wasn't anything serious. Maybe it was a dentist's appointment or a parent-teacher conference. It couldn't be serious, because Hotch had indicated that he would be here for work tomorrow.
Returning to his coffee, Reid took another sip and turned his attention to the second floor corridor overlooking the bullpen. He watched Garcia hurry down the corridor, holding a thick packet of printouts. She stopped in front of Rossi's office and knocked on the door. After a minute or so, Rossi opened the door, accepted the packet, and invited Garcia into his office. Garcia disappeared inside, the door closing on its own behind her, the door conspiring with the blinds to shut Reid out from the secrets within.
Reid wondered what Garcia and Rossi were working on together. Maybe it was one of Rossi's endless supply of cold cases. When it came to solving cold cases, Rossi seemed to trust technical analysts more than fellow profilers. Reid knew that Rossi trusted only himself. That was why partnering with Rossi was so unsatisfying.
Without realizing what he was doing, Reid continued looking around the bullpen and the offices on the second floor. He continued looking even after he had finished his cup of coffee. After dithering by the kitchen counter for several more minutes, Reid realized that he was looking for JJ. Of course, he knew that JJ wasn't going to show up at Quantico anymore. She was gone, and Reid hadn't heard from her since she had left. He supposed that she was adjusting to her new job with the Department of Defense. He wished that she were still around to roll her beautiful blue eyes at him.
Reid washed his cup, put it back into a top cabinet, and shuffled back to his desk. He placed a pair of headphones over his ears. No sound came through the headphones. Their only purpose was to prevent people from speaking to him. He had acquired them recently, after a series of bizarre rationalizations that would have landed him in a mental institution if he had dared reveal them to anyone.
The reasoning was extraordinarily convoluted.
During the past year, Reid had noticed that he had overstayed his welcome in the BAU. Previously, during his early years on the team, his unique intellect had been appreciated and treasured. His intellectual exuberance, the random fact-spewing tirades that flooded out of his mouth without conscious inhibition, had been foreborne as the price to be paid for his intellect. Now, everyone had become accustomed to his intellect, so his intellect was taken for granted, while his intellectual exuberance was universally despised. Before she had left, JJ had been the only one who still spared the energy to roll her eyes whenever Reid let slip a little too much of his love for the world and all the knowledge contained within it. Now that JJ was gone, all Reid had to look forward to were blank stares from Morgan, exasperated stares from Rossi, and apologetic glances from Prentiss to everyone else for setting off yet another geyser of irritating irrelevancy.
Throughout his life, Reid had always known that his intellectual exuberance made people uncomfortable. Some people drew the conclusion that he was showing off, as if a one-in-a-billion genius with an IQ of 187 needed to show off. Reid didn't like it when people assigned him motives where he had none. Other people considered him a bore, and he thought that a far more legitimate reason to dislike him. Growing up as he had, he was used to being disliked, and he had learned not to let it affect him too much.
The problem was that, in recent years, Reid had settled into a comfortable position in the BAU. He had become part of a team, which had sewn itself into a family, and he had watched, open-mouthed and slack-jawed, as the family had begun to come apart at the seams. In moments of brutal honesty, Reid admitted that it was not so much the family coming apart as it was his own position within the family. Time had done its work, changing the interpersonal dynamics of the changing team. Anyone who did not adjust to change would find himself thrown out into the cold dark vacuum.
Reid remembered a time, a few years ago, when he had been the naive young genius who had needed to be handled with kid gloves. Since then, he had grown up, and he was glad not to be handled with kid gloves anymore, but it seemed as if the removing of the gloves had uncovered the truth concealed beneath the leather. Now, the team members were free to show their true feelings of indifference or annoyance or dislike. In Reid's eyes, they did exactly that.
Most of the time, indifference was the order of the day. At first, it had not been a big deal. Reid was not an attention-mongerer. He no longer sought approval from his peers or superiors. But a person could only stand so many dead looks from his former friends and colleagues before he began to question his relationships with all of them.
The dead looks from his former friend and semi-confidante, Derek Morgan, hurt the most. Reid suspected that Morgan had grown tired of him. Either he had worn Morgan down with his insufferability, or he had done something specific to offend Morgan. He subscribed more readily to the first theory than the second. In the linear combination that characterized the phenomenon, the scalar that multiplied the insufferability vector was greater in value than the scalar that multiplied the offense vector. Given that Morgan was not the only one who found him insufferable, Reid assumed that the scalar that multiplied the insufferability vector had spiraled to unbelievable heights for all the team members. As further evidence for the dominance of the insufferability vector, Reid doubted that he had generated offense vectors for everyone in the BAU. He suspected that some of the offense vectors were multipled by scalars of value zero.
Eventually, linear algebra had worked its way to headphones. Reid had reasoned that if he wore headphones, then others would naturally assume that he was listening to music or Peter Coyote reading the "Foundation" trilogy. Others would hesitate to interrupt him. Others would not speak to him quite as often, and he would not have quite as many opportunities to open his own mouth. As long as he kept his mouth shut, nothing insufferable could possibly leak out. Reid had concluded that each person, himself excluded, maintained a quota of insufferability that accepted a limited volume of the aforementioned. The volume was different for each person. When the quota was filled, the person would begin to actively dislike the person who had filled it. Reid surmised that he had simply filled the quotas of all his teammates much too quickly. His only saving grace was that the quota was leaky. Everyday, a portion of the quota drained away, such that the volume would empty over time, as long as it was not frequently replenished. Reid had only to wait, a few weeks for Prentiss, a few months for Morgan, a year or so for Rossi, until the quotas drained away. When the process was complete, he would be able to converse with his friends and colleagues again, and the old sense of belonging would rise up to embrace him with its warmth and comfort.
In the next reincarnation cycle, Reid would handle the quotas with all the care and attention that they deserved. Deep in his heart, he sighed with regret that he had not known about the quotas earlier. He consoled himself with the thought that he was not perfect, that no one was perfect, and that each mistake was a chance to learn something new.
"Hey Reid! Earth to Reid!" Morgan snapped his fingers in front of Reid's daydreaming face. "How about some lunch?" he leaned over the desk in a friendly manner.
"Yeah, Reid, we're thinking subs across the street," Prentiss stood up and patted the stack of completed case files. "There's a new bacon-wrapped pork rind side dish that Morgan's dying to try," she shuddered, imagining her arteries clogging up with pure porcine lard.
"No thanks," Reid said, "I brought sandwiches for lunch."
"Not PB&J again? That's not the way to put some meat on your bones, Kid," Morgan admonished.
"No, ham-and-cheese this time," Reid smiled proudly. "I even put in a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce. You're always reminding me to eat my vegetables."
"Well, someone has to," Morgan teased.
"What about you, Morgan? Who reminds you to eat your vegetables?" Prentiss asked. "Who reminds you not to eat your bacon-wrapped pork rinds?"
"Hey, watch it," Morgan replied. "I work out two hours a day. I think I deserve my bacon-wrapped pork rinds every once in awhile. Geek Boy here can barely lift his bag," he glanced over Reid's desk at the messenger bag on the floor, ascertaining that it was indeed filled to the brim with mysterious unseen entities.
"Ha ha, very funny," Reid swiveled away from Morgan. "Enjoy your lunch," he swiveled around to find that Morgan and Prentiss had already left their desks and parked themselves in front of the elevator.
After his former friends and colleagues had disappeared into the elevator, Reid replayed and analyzed the exchange in his mind. For a few minutes, it had felt like old times in the BAU bullpen. Morgan teased Reid. Prentiss teased Morgan. Everyone had a good time, despite the realities of an uncertain unstable life in which no one knew what den of atrocities he would be jetting off to or what freak of human nature he would be dealing with the next time the Sun came up.
Reid dug his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches out of his messenger bag. He had lied about the ham-and-cheese sandwiches. He had lied, because he hadn't wanted Morgan to pressure him into going out for lunch.
Since he had started the experiment with the headphones, Reid had felt more at peace with himself, knowing that the quotas were slowly draining away. Every minute that he did not spend mouthing off now was a minute that he could spend building concrete relationships later. At 29, Reid no longer considered himself a young person. He had grown up enough to desire meaningful friendships, if not romantic relationships. He didn't want to be a jiggling mass of gray matter that people excavated for what it knew before sticking it back into the fridge for safe-keeping. He didn't want to be a little brother that people could ignore or tease according to their whim. He wanted to be an equal partner in an adult friendship, one in which he could interact with someone without having to analyze the exchange later.
Operation Headphones and the whole legion of convoluted thinking behind it was the first step towards the goal. It would give Reid a fresh start in the BAU. While Operation Headphones was in effect, Reid was not about to ruin everything by going out to lunch with Morgan and Prentiss. A moment of pleasure was not worth a lifetime of pain.
"Thud!" Reid's messenger bag dropped to the floor of his bedroom.
"Plop!" Reid sprawled face-first onto the bed.
"Creak!" the bed complained as he flipped over.
"Poof!" Reid blew air through his lips and gazed up at the ceiling.
True to form, the ceiling was covered with glow-in-the-dark stars arranged into the northern constellations. The only anomaly was a cluster of glow-in-the-dark trilobites that had carved out a niche over the closet door. The extinct marine arthropods marched in a line over the length of the closet, marching now as they had marched through the Paleozoic Era, all the way from the Cambrian Explosion that had created them to the Permian Extinction that had destroyed them. They had fought the good fight for 250 million years. They had adjusted their forms and lifestyles to fit into every ecological niche in the ocean. In the end, it had not been enough.
At the end of the Permian Period, something had happened, and all the trilobites had disappeared, along with 90% of all the other species. Reid supposed that they had all overstayed their welcome on Earth.
Gazing up at the ceiling, Reid stared at the trilobites until his eyes watered. The watering gave him an excuse to close his eyes and think about the dream for the first time since he had escaped its clutches that morning.
In the twelve hours since the dream, the bubble of happiness had burst. Reid no longer delighted in the events of the dream. The overwhelming feeling of joy had been replaced by the cold hard facts before him.
In a dream in which he had murdered an old man, disposed of the body in a dumpster, and evaded the police by cowering in an alcove, Reid had felt nothing but happiness. He had not been afraid of the authorities, even though he had taken precautions to hide from them. He had not been disgusted with himself, not for the killing and not for the cowering. There had been no remorse to speak of. Instead, there had been utter contentment, and he had wished that such a feeling could be bottled and sold.
Reid covered his face with a pillow from the headboard. He made up his mind to have the dream again. Rather, he hoped that he would have the dream again. Not even he, with his incredible insufferable powers of cognition, could will himself to control his subconscious mind. All he could do was close his eyes, think about the dream, and hope to drift into it as he drifted off into sleep.
This time, when he murdered the old man, when he disposed of the body, when he evaded the police, Reid would be afraid and disgusted. He would be filled with remorse. The multiple bad feelings would cancel out the single good feeling. After he awakened, he would never have to think about any of this again.
Note about the murder dream: Prior to discovering CM a few months ago, I did not have dreams in which I murdered people, disposed of bodies, and evaded the police. I am happy to report that such dreams have only made me 0.0362% more homicidal than before.
Note about Reid's sense of alienation: When comparing Seasons 5-6 with Seasons 1-4, I cannot help noticing that the writers have forgotten how to write the team as a family. It seems like there are fewer and fewer meaningful team interactions in the episodes. I used this observation as the basis for developing Reid's sense of alienation or isolation or withdrawal or whatever it is. Much of Reid's thinking is a distortion, but every distortion holds a kernel of truth.
Any thoughts on the first chapter?