Chapter Four: Let Them Know Your Scarlet Heat

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Note to Readers: The poem is called Trickle Drops by Walt Whitman.

1:13 pm, Capital Plaza Apartments

Hotch and Rossi ducked under the yellow police tape sectioning the crime scene off from the public, pausing once inside the barrier.  A body was laying facedown on the ground a couple feet ahead, right next to the brick wall of the apartment complex.  It bore an uncanny resemblance to their missing team member.  Tall, messy brown hair, gangling limbs sprawled out like someone had tossed it there in a hurry.  The corpse had no shirt and the pallid skin on it's back was mottled with bruises and streaked with dirt.  Though it was wearing tan dress pants, the body had a pair of brown leather dress shoes on it's feet instead of Reid's usual black and white sneakers.

Pulling on latex gloves, Hotch and Rossi exchanged a worried glance.  Hotch sighed, and Rossi remarked, "Might as well get it over with," and they both stepped forward.

"A lady out walking her dog spotted it about twenty minutes ago.  We left the crime scene undisturbed," one of the policemen on the scene informed them, and Rossi crouched down to examine the body.

A quick glance over the corpse and he announced, "It's not Reid." 

Both he and Hotch relaxed slightly at that news, and then they let the police process the crime scene.  The police lifted the body onto a stretcher, zipping it into the coroner's bag.

The cause of death was a single shot in the center of the forehead, but the person had been stabbed in the stomach and beaten so brutally anti-mortem that the face was swollen with bruises and broken bones even in death, making it almost unrecognizable as a person.

Rossi called Garcia.

"Oh my god, is it him?" she asked immediately.

"Is it on speaker?" Rossi asked her.

"Yeah," Garcia said.

"Good news, it's not Reid," Rossi started, and heard a collective sigh of relief from the rest of the team on the other end of the line.  "Bad news is, at least in physical stature, it looks a lot like him.  Our unsub has a type, which leads me to believe that he is displacing his rage on other victims because of Reid.  Now that he has Reid, we need to find him before the same thing happens to the kid," Rossi continued.

"We still don't have enough to find him!" Morgan yelled through the phone.

"We'll work this just like any other case.  We have enough to build a profile now, we'll go from there," Rossi said calmly.

"We'll start working on it," Prentiss said.

"Good.  Hotch and I are just heading out now," Rossi said and then hung up.  Hotch joined him and they climbed back in the SUV, driving back to the BAU.

1:47 pm, BAU Office

Everyone was gathered around the table in the conference room, pouring over the pictures and files for the case.  Prentiss pinned up a picture of their unidentified victim on the evidence board, right next to one of Reid before stepping back and sighing.

"The body dumped by Reid's apartment building was both a warning and a threat," Hotch said.

"A warning for who?" JJ asked.

"Us," Morgan answered matter-of-factly, "Reid'll end up just like that if we're not careful," he said warily.

"We'd better find him before then.  Reid may be smart, but even brains can't protect him from an unsub this brutal," Rossi remarked, glancing at a photo in his hand before dropping it back onto the table.

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