When the BAU team arrived, Tim was directing the patrol officers to set up a cordon. Seeing Jack get out of the car, Tim put his hands on his hips, thumbs on his belt, and tilted his head, giving him a critique.
"Aren't you FBI agents supposed to all be wearing white shirts and ties, and black suits? You're the least FBI-like agent I've ever seen."
Jack stepped aside, revealing Reid behind him, smiled, and didn't say anything, refuting the claim with facts.
To be fair, apart from Hotchner, the rest of their team dressed quite casually.
Jack preferred to wear dark, durable long-sleeved or short-sleeved T-shirts with jeans when on field missions, with a jacket to cover his spare gun under his arm; he never wore a suit and tie unless absolutely necessary.
"Where's John?" Jack glanced around, not seeing the rookie.
"They found so bloody footprints inside and are tracking them. Take this."
Tim handed him a walkie-talkie and pointed to a dilapidated neighborhood behind the cordon. Located on the edge of town, it had been abandoned for a long ti; the row houses built against the hillside were crumbling, their walls covered in graffiti.
Unlike the arrogant FBI, the BAU team mbers usually tried their best to maintain relations with the local police. These psychologists were shrewd and knew better than to cause trouble.
Besides, Tim and his team were old friends of Jack's. Even Hotchner, during the brief introductions, rarely smiled.
Seeing Tim, who also liked to maintain a cool deanor, exchanging insincere pleasantries with him, Jack and Hannah couldn't help but smile knowingly.
As they walked into the scene, Hotchner turned to Reid and asked, "How far is this from where the body was dumped last night? Five miles?"
"Six and a half miles to the south." Reid corrected.
"Why? Why go through all this trouble? They know the police are looking for the girls, yet they risk driving so far with the bodies?"
Hannah questioned.
"There must be a reason they had to do this, which is why we ca to the scene." said Rossi, who was walking at the front, as he put on gloves.
Entering the row house where Tim and the others had found clues, they found it similarly covered in strange graffiti, littered with bottles, syringes, and cigarette butts, and reeking of urine.
In the innermost room lay a worn-out mattress, stained with blood and various unidentified liquids, with scattered pieces of torn clothing nearby.
Emily and Hannah quickly approached, avoiding obvious footprints on the ground, and carefully examined the clothing fragnts beside the mattress.
JJ, standing nearby, used her phone to open a statent to help them verify it. It was Mrs. Owen's description of Katie's clothing when she left ho that day.
"Yes, this is it. These clothes match. Katie was…" JJ's face showed reluctance, and she didn't finish her sentence.
"This might be the murder weapon that killed Katie; it matches the mark on her neck." Reid took the belt Jack handed him and carefully examined the tal buckle.
"Cigarette butts everywhere, beer cans, DNA evidence all over the place—this is so unprofessional for a killer."
Jack tried to walk to the mattress but found there was nowhere to step. He had no choice but to kick aside a few empty cans before finally reaching the back.
He carefully pulled the mattress aside a little and, unsurprisingly, found a pink cell phone in the gap between the mattress and the wall.
"Katie's phone was dead. That's why the call was cut off. The killer didn't even notice the girls secretly made the call."
Everyone looked at each other, completely different from what they had expected.
Because of Keeson Vaughn's witness protection status, the most likely scenario was that a professional kidnapped the two girls, tortured and killed one of them, sent a warning to Keeson Vaughn, and then took his daughter to threaten him into refusing to testify.
But what they were seeing didn't seem like that at all.
Hotchner's phone rang; it was Garcia calling. They chatted briefly before ending the call.
"Garcia said she checked all the databases and found no Irish people matching the profile who had recently co from Boston."
"So, is it possible that Katie and Lindsay left the movie theater willingly, but they didn't expect to encounter this?"
Emily, her face grim, put the torn clothes into an evidence bag and looked up at Hotchner.
"You an, none of this has anything to do with the Irish or the gangs?"
A mont of silence fell over everyone. If that were the case, it would just be a typical case of random teenage violence. The person who took the two girls from the movie theater was most likely soone their age; a little alcohol could cause everything to spiral out of control.
"If that's the case, then the destruction of the body's features and the act of dumping the body miles away all make sense."
Reid's expression was equally grim. Their goal wasn't just to solve the case, but to save lives. And given the current developnt of the case, solving it was only a matter of ti, but ti was also what they desperately needed.
The longer it dragged on, the more desperate the killer would beco. Teenagers are at an age most prone to extres, which ant that the other girl, Lindsay's, chances of survival were extrely slim.
"Jack, has your guy's tracking of the bloody footprints at the back door yielded any results?" Standing at the back door, Rossi looked at the police walkie-talkie in Jack's hand.
Coincidentally, just as Jack was about to press the call button, John's excited voice ca through the walkie-talkie, "Hey guys, I found a body in this house in the southwest corner."
A chill ran down everyone's spines. Jack quickly called out, "John, this is Jack. Is the body you found the missing girl?"
"Huh? Jack, it's you?" John was sowhat surprised. "Uh, no, a sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy, looks like he was stabbed to death."
Everyone secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Jack called to the two LAPD officers at the door, handed them the evidence bags they had collected, and headed towards John's location.
The body John found was hidden in another corner of the abandoned row houses, in a dark attic.
The boy lay supine on the floor, still clutching a cell phone, a trail of broken blood on the floor behind him—this was probably why John was able to find the body so quickly.
"Three stab wounds to the chest, likely damaging internal organs and vital blood vessels," Jack said, crouching beside the body, looking into the unseeing eyes.
"The corneas are cloudy, appearing as white clouds, indicating death more than 15 hours ago, likely shortly after Katie's death."
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